Cure for the Ache
by Hopping Cricket
Summary: Canon. Esme's story: how she came to be the strong, beautiful maternal figure in the series, overcoming unbelievable hardships to find her sense of self, and, more importantly, love. Rated for mature themes. First multi-chapter fic. EsmexCarlisle.
1. the foreword

"I don't even know where to start!"  
"Begin with the beginning. Duh."  
--_Cricket and Lulu, _sometime last year

**~0~  
****the foreword**

Dear Readers,

I cannot tell you how happy I am to finally be posting this. I've been writing it for the better part of two years, bits and pieces at a time. Let me just say, I have chosen the two people who are arguably the most complex characters in the series. Esme and Carlisle are not just parents. Far from it, actually. Carlisle is the start of a new generation of humane vampires, bent on protecting the human race from a danger they believe to be only a myth. Esme is his anchor, and, to quote Mr. Rochester from _Jane Eyre_, his hope, his love, his life.

How scary is it to imagine that everything Carlisle does/did/will do could be (and has been, if you poke around on this site for other interpretations) unraveled by her non-existence?

But who exactly is Esme? How much do we know about her, really? I've checked: only the snippets we've managed to glean from personal correspondence with Stephenie Meyer. Could you tell _your _life story if you had only your birth, death, and a few milestones in-between?

I won't pretend it's been easy, but as you'll find with Esme's life and afterlife, nothing worth anything ever comes without struggle.

Esme's human life was far from pleasant--to be frank, it was devastating awful. Living at the cusp of the depression and WWI is strenuous enough, but living in an era where women were meant to be seen and not heard; where wedlock was not a sanctuary, but a prison; where husbands could abuse their wives to their brutal deaths and all the world would turn a blind eye…

There were days I fell asleep crying for Esme, days I quite literally _had _to divert to her life with Carlisle to avoid an emotional breakdown. I think that's the mark of a good series--Stephenie has created this universe where the characters are, as dorky as it may sound, your best friends. I laughed with Esme, cried, wanted to tear my hair out as I forced my pen to scribe the awful things happening, and rejoiced when she finally got her happy ending.

I started the story where I did so that you can see that breaking point; you can see what Esme is driven to do and a brief glimpse of what came before and what will come after. Worry not, we'll be going back to cover that unchartered territory and forward to all the good stuff, as well.

I have to thank my cyber-buddy/beta, Megan (**runaway xo**), who put up with my crazy, disjointed thoughts and all the choppy pieces I sent to her, eager for her opinion. This story's dedicated to you, Megan, for all your help and support.

I won't even think to say that I match Stephenie's talent, or even what she intended with this story. I can only tell you what I know, and what I made up because I didn't know. I humbly offer my interpretation and invention for you to take from it what you will.

So yes, you may _think_ you know Esme's story. You think you understand the pain, the angst, the despair, and the bright light of love that erased all of those things. But you don't.

Not yet.

I'm Cricket--and welcome to a little town up north called Ashland, 1921...


	2. the fall

******disclaimer: Stephenie owns the sandbox, but she's kind enough to share the sand.**

* * *

"Life is like a movie: if you've sat through more than half of it, and it's sucked every second so far, it probably isn't going to get great right at the end and make it all worthwhile. None should blame you for walking out early."  
_--Doug Stanhope_

**~0~  
****the fall**

If you ever plan on killing yourself, please think it through.

You may actually be surprised at how much planning goes into a quick, painless death. There are those who would press a gun to their heads. I believe it not only…unsavory, but perhaps more than a bit painful. Drowning, too, is unpleasant. Because I cannot think of a single person who would like to essentially feel their lungs collapse. Shakespeare's Juliet took a knife to her heart, conceivably to portray the agony she felt at Romeo's death. Then again, if I had just suffered an emotional blow such as hers, I would wish my demise to be as innocuous as possible.

Needless to say, flinging myself off of a cliff was not my best idea.

In my own defense though, I have to say that it was an act of passion, not malice. I did not intend to hurt anyone by taking my life — though to be honest, I wasn't thinking of anyone but me.

Time slowed down perceivably as the looming rocks near the base of the cliff increased ever so slowly in size. It was at this point that I thought to myself that this probably could have been done in a slightly less…messy fashion.

The cliff was much higher than I had anticipated, the drop already making me feel lightheaded. This would be alright. The altitude, the rate of speed attached to my plummeting form, the high-pitched whistle of the air zooming by my ears: I would be dead long before I so much as touched those rocks.

Thank goodness.

Who would have thought? Esme Platt, carefree girl of a small town in Ohio, would be the one to take the coward's way out.

I could have worked things out, you know. I could have struggled through the rest of my life, killing myself slowly over what I could have done to save my baby. Or better yet, what I could have done to save myself from the monster, better known as Charles Evenson. I could have, should have, would have…

…I just did not want to.

Surely, there would have been a better time to contemplate my shattered life other than the moment I chose to end it. But as to why I was suddenly having all these deep and meaningful thoughts now, I did not question.

It's a sort of phenomenon the way the mind works after it knows it will very soon cease to exist. First, there was of course the 'Esme Anne Platt, what in God's name were you thinking?'. Soon afterwards came the condemnation of God entirely. What had He done for me? He had given me a husband who liked to beat me almost as much as he liked his bottles of whiskey. Just as I had been forcefully relieved of the simple life of a single woman, He had robbed me of my dignity and sanity completely.

I had thought it a miracle, my redemption, when I was graced with a baby boy.

God took that away, too.

Next was the panic of dying. Where would I go? Who was I leaving behind? Would anyone _really_ care, anyway?

I dismissed that, not wanting to dwell on anything that made me unhappy.

The last thing I remember before my death was the stunning face of a young doctor who had treated me.

I must have been younger than eighteen at the time, still foolish and gangly with girlish youth. I had fallen from a tree in an attempt to return a baby robin to its nest in the old oak half of a mile from my home. Addie, distracted by the presence of our childhood friend (who would later become her husband) was not the sturdiest base…nor the best candidate to catch me when I slammed to the ground mere moments later.

My parents were not at all pleased when I broke my leg.

But I'll never forget that man's face, or my reaction to his presence. Dr. Cullen was professional to a T. I felt…dirty feeling the way I did when his cool hand glided gently over my leg. And the way he looked at me, like I was worth much more than the fate that would await me. My mother couldn't account for the dreamy, dazed countenance I kept for days afterwards, chalking it up to the pain medications _he_ had prescribed.

Dr. Cullen received more than one page of complete devotion in my diary. He left that month and I never had a chance to say goodbye.

I would not have been able to, of course, given that it would have been _unseemly_. But I didn't care. Unconsciously, I would spend the rest of my life, glancing over my shoulders for that handsome, blonde head and the slow, lazy smile that made my heart flutter.

My heart was almost lethargic now, like it had been given too much to drink. I was alright with this; the sooner this ended, the sooner I would be free of this ache that no medicine known to man could cure.

Vaguely, I realized that I had stopped falling, and the pain I felt upon impact was hardly noticeable. For all intents and purposes, I was already dead. My heart, my mind, my soul: I just had to wait for my body to catch up.

How long I waited, I am not entirely certain. I lay limply, neither protesting nor giving any indication that I was still breathing (if only just) would when rough hands scooped me up off of what I had hoped would be my final resting place.

I was placed none-too-gently in a warm, dark place. Doors slammed, and I thought to myself, _Finally. Finally._

But my eyes, complying with everything up until this point, shifted slowly open as another sound pervaded the darkness. A face, looking no older and more beautiful than I remembered, came into my line of sight.

"I am dead," I murmured, the sound so pitiful I almost wept. Where was the overwhelming blackness? Was this hell? Being tortured with the image of the man I loved long before I knew what love was?

The irony was not lost on me.

A voice, melodic and deep whispered back, "Not quite, Miss Platt."

And then…nothing.

* * *

**A/N: I'm more than willing to give a sneak peak of the next chapter to anyone who asks for it. Also, don't expect the chapters to stay this short; I got me some tricks up my sleeve... Read and review, please! Love, Cricket.**


	3. the good doctor

**A/N: Sorry, sorry! I intended to post this first thing this morning, but my computer was doing strange things to the document (i.e., DELETING IT) so I've been fighting to save it for the better part of the day. On the bright side, it's a good 6,000 words of Esme's first time meeting Carlisle... Things even out :D **

**disclaimer: it's Stephenie's toy box; I just play with the toys. **

* * *

"Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked."  
—_Ralph Ellison_

**~0~**

**the good doctor**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1911**_

"Esme!" Addie wailed, her voice only slightly muffled from the freckled hands that covered her face. "You'd be pickin' today to start listenin' to me?"

"Listening" of course meaning the fact that mere seconds after Addie caustically suggested that I fall out of the tree she'd boosted me into as retribution for my foolishness and "break my silly neck," I had indeed lost my balance and tumbled from the highest branch.

The witty reply (that I had broken my leg, not my neck) died on my lips as the carriage lurched through another pothole.

"Hush up, the both of you!" my mother muttered crossly. She glanced back every so often with ashen anxiety evident in her narrow face, not even realizing that I had yet to utter a single syllable since they loaded me into the back of the carriage.

I shivered as the wind whipped through the slats of wood in the wagon, unable to surround myself with the woolen blanket that covered my lap. Why? No, the blanket was not there to warm my knees through the thin cotton of my dress; it was there to conceal my leg, twisted at an odd, gruesome angle.

And in the carriage everyone seemed to have something to do but me. Addie's fiery red head was bowed while she murmured a prayer in Gaelic under her breath, too quick for my American ears to decipher; my father was navigating the horses, doing his best to avoid the ruts in the road for my sake; my mother was risking whiplash as she alternated from staring ahead on the booth with my father, then back at me with a mixture or pity, anger, and worry in her brown eyes.

At a loss of how to abate the shooting pain in my leg, I clung to the boards in the bed of the wagon. Splinters embedded themselves in the pads of my fingers as another wave of excruciating sensation almost doubled me over.

"Are we almost there?" I managed to eke out through clenched teeth.

"Shush!" was the reply from the front. Addie only whined nervously and doubled her prayer's speed.

This could only happen to me, honestly. Only I would feel the need to return an unhatched robin to its nest, apparently risking life and limb as I hoisted myself into the maple tree — only I would have a best friend so enamored with the boy who lived down the way (and also happened to be my best friend) that she'd lose her grip and send me crashing down — and only I would chose to do all of the aforementioned in a tiny town that was a good eight miles from the nearest hospital.

What choice had my mother and father had but to cart me there with our only means of transportation?

"Hail Mary, Full of Grace…"

"Addie," I chortled, half hysterical. "You aren't even Catholic." She continued as though she hadn't heard me, shifting to a more comfortable position on her knees.

The pain was transcending everything now. Not only did it hurt to rock over the bumpy path at a snail's pace, it even hurt to hear all the things going on around me. Ironically enough, I was able to hear them all.

"John, how far?"

"I'm not sure, Rebecca. I've never traveled all this way in the dark…"

"Are we lost?"

Agitation. "Don't start, Rebecca. We're not lost."

"I'm just not sure how much longer she can--"

More agitation. "She'll have to."

Addie's praying got louder. "Hail Mary, Mother of God…"

Mother's voice was rising in pitch and taking on a frantic quality. "There isn't any way we could go faster, is there?"

"Not without jostling her straight out of the back door."

Yes, I'd rather we just avoided that option altogether.

"…Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." Death? Surely this sort of thing could cause…cause…that, right? But before I could voice my meek question, Addie had started another foreign chant.

My breaths came shorter and shorter, drowning out the conspicuous disagreement taking place in front of me and the fervent muttering beside me. My vision swam.

"Esme…Esme? John, is she breathing?!"

My father could only spare a quick look over his shoulder. "Adelaide, is she?" he posed the question to my harried friend.

She in turn pressed a warm hand to my chest, monitoring its shaky rise and fall. "I think the pain's gettin' to be too much, Mr. Platt."

Unsure of how to handle the situation, my father grunted. After this, Addie and my parents conversed in low tones, much too low for me to catch.

Then she turned to me, sitting me up fully against the side of the carriage--no easy feat, as I lacked the strength to keep myself from flopping about with every jolt of the wheels. I could see the culpability dominating the emerald green of her gaze. This would not be good.

She flushed red the way she did whenever she was doing something that would get her into trouble. "I'm very sorry about this, Esme."

Sorry about what?

Addie bit her lip, drew back her fist…

"Addie…" It came out as little more than a resigned whine.

Everything went black.

**~0~**

I awoke to several sounds. The rush of rain pouring from the sky, the nervous drumming of Mother's fingers, angry voices — a man and a woman — arguing…

My eyes fluttered open. So it seemed we had arrived at the hospital after all. My leg throbbed as a reminder of the reason for our visit, but I was surprised to find that my head pounded dully, as well, the pain emanating from my left eye—

Addie. Of course.

"We need to see a doctor!"

"Saying it again and again won't make it happen, sir. You'll have to wait until the morning."

"We don't live in these parts. We can't wait until the morning." Father was more upset than I'd ever heard him. I realized then the strange weightless feeling came from the fact that he was carrying me, gesturing with me in his hands.

The woman sounded exasperated. "All of the doctors have gone home, sir. I can't help you."

"What kind of hospital is this?" I swung wildly with Father's anger as he seemed to forget I was there.

I remember plainly that it was not the sound that alerted me; it was the smell. Rising above the musk of the damp hospital was a scent so bewitching, I had no choice but to be tugged fully out of my stupor. It was… I cannot fairly describe it… It was just the scent of everything good in the world, all the happiness and justice and kindness rolled into something I am to this day unable to name.

And then:

"What seems to be the problem?"

Let me pause just a moment here to explain something. We from the North are supposed to be free of superstition. It's really more of the type of thing I classified with the South — my cousins that we had visited only once when I was four had been ridiculously obsessed with them, and I found every other thing I did to be an omen of my impending death.

Then again, I was best friends with an Irishwoman who thought herself fey in all things. So I did possess my fair share of petty superstitions. To be specific, I believed that without a doubt, there were moments in life that would come and define the rest of your existence.

It just isn't always possible to recognize those moments for what they truly are.

I was not accustomed to seeing glorious, breath-taking sights before my eyes every day, and was, to be frank, struck dumb at the wonder.

Not of a painting or a landscape, no.

The voice's owned stood clad in an overcoat, absently stripping his hands of rubber gloves and disposing of them in a bin in the corner.

He was tall. Much taller than the men who lived nearby the farm. But neither was he portly, like my father, or rail-thin like Mr. Isaacs next door.

I liked to think that I had few vanities, that I appreciated more what was inside a person than what sort of visage they presented to the world, but my mind staggered in shock. Men are never beautiful — they aren't supposed to be — but this man was. And even this word was too inadequate to describe him.

He had hair so fair I wondered that he lived up in our dreary climate when he was obviously more accustomed to the sunlight. But I halted that thought at the sight of his skin, pale in almost an ethereal way so that he seemed to glow, a beacon of light in the dark room.

My heart sighed.

My father cleared his throat in that awkward manner he had whenever he was unsure of what to say. He set me down none-too-gently in one of the wooden seats in the waiting room and stepped forward toward the beautiful stranger. "I'm John Platt. I reckon my daughter's leg is broken, and we're not from around here. It's kinda late," my father intoned gruffly, "but we need to see Dr. Mitchell."

There were so many differences between the two men: my round father, dark-haired with restless hands tucked into the pockets of his overalls, and the other man with his golden hair and statuesque calm.

Then he smiled, somewhat sheepishly, and I could not explain the rush of happiness that filled me. "I apologize, Mr. Platt." He spoke softly, slowly, with a deliberateness I attributed to the accent that clung to his voice. "Dr. Mitchell has taken leave for his son's wedding. But perhaps I might be of assistance?"

"How?" my mother wanted to know. Her voice seemed so shrill in comparison to the lilting candor of the angel standing within the room.

He smiled once more, focusing his attention on her. Bending ever so slightly at the waist, he drawled, "Excuse me, I forget my manners. My name is Dr. Carlisle Cullen." Mother's brown eyes, the ones I had inherited, widened dramatically, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.

Then again, I very much doubt any man had ever bowed to her in her lifetime.

Addie rushed in out of the dark where I could hear an enormous storm brewing. I felt ashamed for not even realizing that she had been missing, in all likelihood tending to the horses (her specialty) while my father had carried me inside.

She was clamoring to my father even as she unpinned the tiny plaid cap she always wore, her back to us as she wrung out the water that had saturated the fabric. In the stunned silence of the room, each individual droplet could be heard clear as anything.

"Mr. Platt, I'm thinking' the horses are a bit spooked— Oh." She took in the scene, my befuddled parents, the disgruntled nurse, me seated holding my leg as best I could.

Then her eyes wandered to the thing most out of place in this setting. _Him. _

"Saints preserve us," Addie murmured faintly.

Dr. Cullen's lips twitched.

"Dr. Cullen," the nurse chimed in, breaking the stupor that pervaded the room. "Your shift already ended."

"Did it?" He paused to look at a clock on the wall behind him. The muscles in his back rippled from that little effort and I felt myself growing lightheaded again. "I suppose another hour won't do any lasting damage, will it, Harriet?"

A bit flustered at the accent flowing melodically over her name (not that I could blame her in the slightest), Harriet stuttered, "N-No, I suppose not—"

"That's fine, then. Why don't you take the rest of the night off? I'm sure we won't have very many new admissions with the weather in the state it is." Harriet nodded vaguely and stood, as caught up in this spell Dr. Cullen had weaved as the rest of us were. He held out her coat, shrugging out of his to hold it over her head as he escorted her to the carriage outside. "Send your husband my regards," I heard him call over the noise of the storm.

Mother was speechless. Father muttered something unintelligible.

Addie recovered first. "Sweet Mary. Who in the name of Finn _was _that?"

"Adelaide Murphy!" Mother hissed.

Any other time, I would have been beyond amused by Addie's frank analysis. But the world fell away from me as I watched Dr. Cullen emerge from the outside, dripping water to add to the miniature lake Addie had created. His hair had transformed into the color of burnt gold, plastered against his forehead, though he seemed not to mind at all.

"She's a bit of a stickler for the rules," he said to my stoic father by means to explanation, the sheepish smile once more adorning his face.

Father grumbled to himself, something that sounded like, "Looks too young to be a doctor…"

I couldn't help but agree. I'd come to associate the whiskered, haggard appearance with all doctors, something Dr. Cullen most definitely did not possess.

"I actually hear that quite a bit, Mr. Platt," Dr. Cullen said jovially, looking not a whit offended by my father's implication. "You're welcome to take a look at my credentials if it will give you peace of mind." Caught by his rudeness, Father shook his head briskly.

"Is this our patient, then?"

And then, in a moment I swear on my life I will never forget, he stared directly at me.

My first thought as I was frozen in his gaze was that his eyes were golden, too. Our cousins had a neighbor who was a beekeeper, and I remember the exact color of the honey just after it was harvested, a color so pure and strong and good and right…

Dr. Carlisle Cullen's eyes were that precise shade.

"She was climbin' a tree and she broke her leg," Addie put in helpfully. "Well, that's what we're thinkin,' anyway."

And that sent my parents, tight-lipped in their awe up until this point, into a frenzy. They had yet to question Addie and I as to exactly what we'd been doing climbing the tallest tree on our lane, how we could have been so foolish, what two young women — of marrying age, for Heaven's sake — were doing engaging in such childish antics. Addie instantly had her "Irish up" (as her mother frequently put it) and was defending us hotly in a mix of her mother tongue and English that only added to the tumult.

All the while, Dr. Cullen seemed utterly at peace, unaffected by the heated "discussion" taking place. _Look at us_, my mind moaned. And I was ashamed in that moment of how we must appear to the cool, cultured doctor.

Mortified color flooded my face. The honeyed orbs flashed to my face so quickly, I was almost sure he could hear the embarrassed stagger of my heartbeat.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "it might be easier all around if you all remained here while I tend to Miss Platt's leg." It was posed as a question, in deference to my parents' sensibilities, but it brooked no argument. Addie, stubborn as ever, opened her mouth to retort…

Even as I clenched my eyes shut, willing the Earth to swallow me whole with the next tactless exclamation on the part of my best friend, Dr. Cullen intervened smoothly. "The examination rooms are so small; I only want this to be as painless as possible for our patient."

My eyes popped open. Addie turned to look at me guiltily (probably remembering that it was, in essence, her fault that I was here in the first place…) and nodded, bowing her head. When my parents still remained silent, she murmured, "Esme?"

She was asking me if I was averse to spending an indefinite period of time in a small room with a man who sure must be an angel.

Alone.

My cheeks heated for an entirely different reason. I had to keep my eyes averted from the doctor as I replied in as dignified a tone as I could muster over the pounding of my heart, "I will be fine, Addie."

Would I?

My father hoisted me up to standing position with the rough tenderness he rarely displayed. "Can you walk, Esme?"

All I knew was that I couldn't — wouldn't — break the tangible connection that passed between Dr. Cullen and I. Or at least the one-sided frisson of delight that snaked up my spine at the mere sight of him. When I regained the strength to speak, my voice was cloudy and pitched slightly higher than I'd ever heard it. "I can try."

I balanced precariously on one limb, and the doctor was instantly at my side wrapping a cool arm around my waist for support. "Steady, now. Can you manage it?"

How anyone could have expected an intelligent response from me when I was so inappropriately close to a man…

I hobbled with his aid until my parents and Addie were out of sight, then found myself unable to continue. The pain had abated due to my concentration on what I thought to be a far more worthy cause, but had been brought back with startling sharpness the moment I attempted to make any use at all of my injured leg.

I stumbled, attempting to walk on a single leg, and flushed red once more at my clumsiness.

And then, as if the heavens opened up overhead and smiled upon me, Dr. Cullen swept me up into his arms as if I weighed nothing at all.

One arm supported my knees, the other tucked beneath my back. The sinful wish that there was no irritating fabric to divide the skin on his forearm from my bare legs caught me so off guard, that I inhaled sharply.

And — oh, my. Oh, my goodness. That magnificent smell was coming from him.

"My apologies," he said, mistaking the reasoning behind my gasp. "I was hoping I might avoid jostling that leg. Are you alright?"

Dear Lord. I could…feel the words rumbling against my side.

The squeak that left my throat would never be understood by anyone but mice and unoiled hinges.

Concern colored his tone when he next spoke. "Miss Platt, try and remain calm. We've only a few more steps until the examination room and I can give you something to take away some of the pain."

I must have given some sort of indication that I had understood this, because with a small apologetic smile, Dr. Cullen began to stride down the badly illuminated hallway.

I had half-expected to be bumped with his every step (as I was when my father, bless him, had carried me to my bedroom countless times when I was ill). But I quickly came to the realization that Dr. Cullen did not quite walk; he…glided. It was as if his shoes (polished, high-quality leather, I could tell even in the lighting) hovered half an inch above the ground.

Something within me sighed in acceptance. He was too beautiful to do something as mundane as walk.

We reached the closed door of the examination room, seemingly miles from where my parents were anxiously waiting. He paused at the door, long enough for me to realize his dilemma of how to turn the knob with me still residing (too comfortably) in his arms. Then the arm beneath my legs vanished for half a second and returned before I my mind could register the loss.

And the door was open.

Whatever logic still remained within me — doubting what I had felt, wanting to know how he had moved so quickly — completely evaporated as Dr. Cullen shut the door at his back, enclosing us in the room.

Alone.

My breathing picked up against my will.

_What in God's name is the matter with you?_

There was a small table in the room, presumably for the patients. I knew I had assumed correctly when, all too soon, I was out of Dr. Cullen's grasp and place with infinite care onto the surface.

He crouched to my level (as I was still nearly a foot shorter than he) and peered into my face. My breathing, frenetic as it had been, ceased entirely.

"Have I hurt you?"

Dumbly, I shook my head. There was nothing remotely…_romantic_ about this occasion. But I was having very much difficulty convincing myself of that. That warm glow that touched Dr. Cullen's eyes did not fade as he lifted my eyelid a bit wider to gaze at my pupils. I could see how transfixed I appeared in his gaze, but I was unable to do a single thing to adjust. That scent had robbed me of all logical thought, function…

He wrapped my stiff fingers around a small cup filled with a thick, brown liquid. I hadn't even realized he'd moved. I forced down the medicine, grimacing at the taste, and passed him the cup when he smiled apologetically.

"You were unconscious when you arrived, Miss Platt. Had you fainted?"

_How did he…? _Morbid embarrassment of how I had come to achieve said unconscious state lit my cheeks afire. I forced the words past stiff lips: "Not in as many words, no."

He raised golden eyebrows to press me on, only heightening my shame.

"I…Well, I was not doing too well in the carriage, so my friend tried to help me… sleep." Involuntarily, my hands drifted up to the eye that still throbbed from Addie's enthusiastic attempt to "help."

"She…hit you?" Dr. Cullen choked.

Yes? I fiddled with my dress under the weight of his stare. "She's Irish," I murmured as if that explained everything.

He turned from me quickly, reaching for a container of something I couldn't read on the label. Then the cap was off and the medicinal scent assured me it was a cream of some kind.

"We can take care of your eye, first," Dr. Cullen said, the slow drawl drugging me into compliance.

His two forefingers dipped into the salve and all at once I realized his intention. He was going to…

His voice lowered to a whisper as he came nearer. "This may be a bit cold."

The moment his skin touched mine, a shudder worked its way through me, one that had nothing at all to do with the fact that the cream was cold. Although I had the distinct feeling that the coolness came not from the cream, but from Dr. Cullen himself. I had to close my eyes to catch the involuntary noise of contentment as his capable fingers rubbed delicious circles into the bruised flesh.

And far before it should have ever ended if I had my way, it did.

Dr. Cullen held my stare when my eyes opened, looking just as stunned as I at what had transpired.

He was so close. In the stillness of the damp hospital, I could hear my breath puffing out unsteadily. _Please_, my mind begged. But I did not even know what it was that I wanted. I only knew that I felt as if I might burst out of my skin if it didn't happen. And happen quickly.

I saw his lips moving — so close — but didn't process the words. What would it be like to —

"I'm afraid setting the bones will be a bit more painful."

The words slid in and out of my head in a dreamy haze that may or may not have been caused by the contents of that cup. "I don't mind," I murmured stupidly.

Kind beyond any human capacity, Dr. Cullen chose not to comment on my breathy whisper, instead instructing me gently to lie back on the unyielding table. I complied unquestioningly. And all at once I was staring at my toes, the pale skin dusty and faintly tinged with brown. My mother's admonishments to scrub my feet that morning echoed painfully in my mind's eye. Embarrassment had my color rising once more…

Sweet Jesus. If I had thought the feel of Dr. Cullen's fingers was as close to divinity as I could manage on Earth, I was entire unprepared for the moment he placed an entire hand on my leg. I very nearly jumped off of the table.

He yanked his hand back. "Oh, dear. I'm sorry, Miss Platt. I should have—"

"No!" The hasty denial came out nearly before I even thought of it. "You — I — It was just a little cold, is all." I laid perfectly still to prove I was capable of handling that connection that was all the more palpable in the tiny room.

Hesitantly, his left hand once more rested on my kneecap, the other landing on the place that throbbed the most.

I knew that even in my intoxicated state, the pain was unavoidable. The look of sympathy on Dr. Cullen's face eased the anxiety a bit, but not enough.

"You have nothing to fear." He was trying to distract me and I was nothing but grateful. "You're a healthy young woman; the bones will mend themselves quickly."

I frowned. _Young woman. _I didn't like the subtle barrier it put between us.

_There are oceans of barriers between you!_ shouted the part of my mind that still remembered propriety and all the other couth that had long since blissfully floated away.

He could not be so much older than I. The clear, clean, unlined skin, the boyishness of that smile, the brilliant vibrancy of his eyes…

I must have been around Addie for too long, for I burst out without thinking, "How old are you?"

Dr. Cullen, instead of frowning in reprimand as any other man I knew might have, smiled easily. It set off a dimple in his chin, and I thanked my lucky stars that he spoke before my mind could wander down sinful avenues: "Thirty-one."

I almost denied it by reflex. It couldn't be true. I tried to draw a comparison between him and William (the only boy I knew who seemed close to appearing Dr. Cullen's age) but found myself unable. No matter how I had always thought William handsome… he and Dr. Cullen were not even on the same page. In the same book. The same shelf. Library.

"I am sorry," I found my lips saying of their own accord. "It is so late. I must be keeping you from your wife."

His eyes were fierce with an emotion I could not name as they met mine once more. "I … am not married."

The smile was difficult to contain. "Oh."

There was a short pregnant pause during which his eyes searched mine for something I could not figure. "On the count of three, then?"

"What?"

"Your leg, Miss Platt."

What leg? Oh.

"Yes," I murmured, clenching my eyes shut.

I am ashamed to say that I screamed, shocked more than anything that one place could cause so much pain. The tears came close to blinding me, but I could discern the misery in Dr. Cullen's gaze as I convulsed.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he whispered again and again.

And I knew that he meant it. That was my final thought as once again, I slipped under the dark cover.

**~0~**

Something was weighing my leg down. Something itchy. I went to scratch at it, startled when I bumped something rather hard and solid.

"It is called a cast," said the voice I'd wanted more than anything to hear at that moment. "It will hold the bones better than gauze since I've heard tell that you rarely stay in one place."

His lips twitched and the dimple winked at me.

I smiled back, shyly, unsure. Was he… _teasing _me?

"Climbing trees is dangerous business," I ventured. "I'm only pleased there wasn't any blood."

As if I'd said something terribly amusing, Dr. Cullen threw back his head and laughed openly, long and hard.

I maintain that there has never been nor will there ever be a more glorious sight.

Then the door was open, breaking the little piece of heaven that had been bestowed upon me.

"Oh, Esme!" Addie all but flung herself at the table. I had barely a moment to shift my bad leg out of harm's way before my arms were pinned to my side in a rough embrace. She began babbling happily in a rush of Gaelic and English that at any other moment, I would have set my mind to deciphering out of habit.

But over the curling red strands of Addie's hair, I saw the distant smile Dr. Cullen sent me. There was something vaguely melancholy in his golden gaze, something that made something in my lower stomach spin and made me want to reach out and — and — touch him.

For the first time ever, I resented Addie's presence.

I wanted her to go very far away and be very quiet.

Then Addie seemed to realize that we were not alone in the bleary room and gasped, "Thank you! Who am I to be thankin' for savin' my friend's life?"

His lips twitched in a half smile. Even as I admonished myself for staring, I could no more pull my gaze from his face than I could steal a star from the heavens. He bowed gallantly, playing into Addie's theatrics. "Dr. Carlisle Cullen. At your service."

Irrational jealousy tugged once at my heart, then banked down as his eyes flashed to me once more.

I remember very little of what happened next. Only that I was given a jar full of little white pills, that my father thanked Dr. Cullen profusely, that my mother sobbed with relief and admonished me for scaring her so badly, and that the entire time, Dr. Cullen did not look away from me.

Not once.

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**A/N: So... hit or miss? Hope it was to your liking--I rather liked writing the hormonal teenage Esme, hee hee. I'm happy to send a sneak peek of the next chapter to anyone who requests it. Review, please! Love, Cricket :D**

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* * *


	4. the matchmaker

**disclaimer: ownership of the Twilight series did not miraculously appear underneath my Christmas tree **— **it's still Stephenie's, not mine.**

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"I never will marry. I'll be no man's wife. I intend to stay single for the rest of my life"  
—_19__th__-century Irish ballad_

**~0~**

**the matchmaker**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1913**_

"I wish you and Will would quit making cow eyes at each other—

"—_Cow eyes?_"

I widened my eyes dramatically, opening and closing them slowly for effect. My voice jumped up an octave. "'Oh, _William_—'"

Red in the face, Addie countered, "If that's to be me you're imitatin'—"

"—And he's no better, not letting you do a single thing for yourself." I roughed my voice, sitting up taller on my stool in the barn. "'Adelaide, let me carry that for you. Adelaide, let me get that; it's too heavy. Adelaide, let me shine your shoes, rub your feet—'"

It ended on a rush of laughter as Addie picked up one of the feet in question and used it to push my stool out from under me. Our giggles echoed through the barn; the cows, used to our antics for the past four years, chewed complacently on the grass in their stalls.

"And you, love?" She came to stand over me, smirking imperiously. "Mooning about for days and days over that doctor of yours?"

It was my turn to blush. More than likely a shade of puce. "He isn't mine. He _wasn't _mine."

And no truer words had ever been spoken. I recalled with startling accuracy how we had bumped along in the wagon six weeks after my accident, my smile nearly cracking my face in half at the prospect of seeing Dr. Cullen once more.

"_You know," Addie murmured under her breath, grinning slyly. "It might be that we could be breakin' something else of yours. An arm this time, maybe?"_

_When my face ran through several shades of color, I could only mutter, "Hush, you."_

_That nurse Harriet's eyes honed in on us the moment we stepped into the hospital. "If you're looking for Dr. Cullen, he's out."_

"_Out where?" Mother inquired. "Should we wait for him to return?"_

"_No." Harriet shuffled through the papers on her desk before handing a small piece of paper to Father. He read it over slowly and passed it to my mother's impatient fingers._

"_Moved!" she exploded. Later, I would find it amusing that for all my parents had grumbled about Dr. Cullen at their first meeting, they seemed oddly put out by the contents of that note._

_Determined to see for myself, I ignored the conversation between Harriet and my parents, neatly grabbing the note from the floor where it had fallen. The handwriting was so elegant and refined, there could be no doubt of who had penned the words._

Mr. and Mrs. Platt, _it read. _I regret to inform you that my mother has taken ill and she has requested to see me, possibly for the last time. Do excuse my absence. I leave you and your daughter in the very capable hands of Dr. Mitchell. Remind Miss Platt, if you will, that she would do well to exercise more caution in her next adventure. Regards, Carlisle Cullen.

_Gone! GONE! _

_It didn't even register that Addie had taken the letter to look over it herself. "Where did he go?" I asked, my mouth opening against my will. _

_Harriet frowned looking affronted. "I don't see how that is any of your business, Miss." Because Mother and Father, too, were regarding me with similar expressions, I thought it wise not to pursue the subject any further._

_Only… I hadn't even been able to say goodbye._

_My eyes flashed quickly to the portion of the letter where he had called me by name. If I closed them, I could almost imagine the way his lips shifted open and closed as he murmured, "Miss Platt" in that slow way of his. I could almost see the knowing smile as he referred to my "adventure," more amused that reprimanding._

_One side of me wanted to comprehend how he could have simply left after that connection we had shared. Another commented that, in all likelihood, it had all been in my mind._

_Regardless, the sadness of his leaving descended heavily on my heart. Addie, surprisingly understanding, took my hand in hers as I bowed my head and let the silent tears fall._

"_I just _know _it Esme," she'd said over and over. "He isn't gone, not really."_

But the words had not made Dr. Cullen materialize, much as I may have wished them to. The stubborn side of me contended that I had never wanted a man before him, I would never want a man after him.

Yes, Dr. Cullen was a passing fantasy to be lived and loved only in my dreams every night like clockwork.

But Addie and Will… That was another situation entirely.

**~0~**

Oh, this was devious. I would surely pay the price for my interference, but something had to give. I could take no more of the wistful stares, the quick glances— William Dempsey and Adelaide Murphy would see the truth of one another's feelings if I had any say at all in the matter.

And, seeing as how they were my best friends in the entire world, I did.

Seated at Mother's desk, I studied the chicken-scratch of Addie's scrawl across the card she had given me for my eighteenth birthday. Then my gaze drifted over to Will's sure, deliberate writing in the Dempsey family Bible.

Possibilities.

It took me the better part of the afternoon to carefully construct the letters, checking and checking once more over the handwriting. Guilt at my actions threatened to imprint a scarlet letter on my forehead, but I pushed it aside.

_Dearest Adelaide, Forgive me for being so bold, but I simply cannot hide it any longer…_

_William, I am truly hoping you'll not be thinking less of me after you read this…_

Sometimes I even amazed myself. Those turtles would thank me someday. I was sure of it.

I folded both letters carefully, carrying them in either hand as I fairly skipped down the stairs in my excitement.

The voice froze me on the last step:

"And just where are you going in such a hurry?"

"Nowhere." I whipped the letters behind my back, smiling innocently under my father's skeptical stare. "I was just going to meet Will, is all."

Father rubbed a hand over his neck, as though what he intended to say stuck in his throat. "I don't know that I…approve of you seeing William on your own, Esme."

_Approve?_

"What with you being… being… _that age _now… People will start to talk if you start walking alone—"

_Alone?_

"—with men—"

_What men? _It was _Will_, for Heaven's sake. Will Dempsey, the boy who used to make pies out of mud and stick strange objects up his nose. The boy I had known practically my whole life.

"—It just isn't right," Father finished.

He had his legs planted apart, almost as if he was squaring off for a fight, like he was expecting me to squabble with him.

I'd done an awful lot of lying today, and I just knew it was going to catch up to me somehow. Nevertheless, I found myself saying, "But I'll be with Addie, too."

And Father had to concede that point. Not wanting to chance any possible rebuttal I rushed back upstairs before he could change his mind.

I decided to leave the letter to Addie on my bed, fearing that some twist of fate would trick me into giving Will the letter addressed to her in his handwriting. Not only would my entire plan fall to pieces, but I'd have an awful lot of explaining to do, as well.

And then I was running the whole mile to the Dempsey house, not caring that my boots were dusty beyond recognition or that the stitch in my side grew worse with each step. I was on a mission.

"Will!" I called unable to conceal my excitement. I called his name over and over from the moment I caught sight of him in the yard. He was splitting firewood outside his aunt and uncle's home, but dropped the axe and smiled when he saw me.

"Is something on fire?" he asked with a grin.

"No," I replied breathlessly. I held out the letter, smirking inwardly as he eyes it curiously. "Addie just told me to give this to you. She said it was important."

At the mention of her name, Will's face softened in the way it did that always let me know my theories about he and Addie weren't unfounded.

He dropped to sit on the stump of the tree. "She could have simply spoken to me…" he murmured almost to himself, still looking dubiously at the envelope.

_Yes, Esme, she could have just spoken to him. _"Well…" My mind fished desperately for a lie. "She said she'd just blunder it if she tried to say it all out loud. And she said she didn't have the courage to come here and give it to you herself."

"Oh." And yet he _still _wouldn't take the envelope! His face became apprehensive in my eyes, erasing all traces of happiness that had been there before. "Esme, you don't happen to know what's in that letter do you?"

_Oh, do I. _I shook my head. "Only one way to find out, Will," I said wagging the paper a little.

He took it with unsteady hands, gray eyes seeking mine in entreaty. I smiled encouragingly before starting the walk back up the hill to my house. I glanced back scrumptiously now and again to find him still seated with the letter unopened in his hands.

_For the love of all things holy, _I grumbled mentally. _Just open it._

When he did (as I watched shamelessly from behind a tree), his eyes raked over it once in absolute shock and he stood with a little noise of disbelief. I just barely hid myself behind the trunk of my niche when he looked up sharply, as though looking for me and wanting me to explain.

And finally, taking my cue from the delighted whoop of laughter behind me, I sent myself on to deliver Addie's letter.

Too easy.

An hour later, I worked diligently in the mirror to press my face into more composed lines. Addie knew me better than anyone else in the world, and she'd see right through my ruse if I wasn't more careful about it. I offered my reflection what I hoped passed for an angelic smile and decided it was now or never.

Father frowned at me leaving in a hurry for the second time, but I could spare him no more than an apologetic glance.

I knocked on the door of the Murphy home, smiling fully when Addie's brother Brian answered. He was fourteen, four years younger than she and I, with the same bright mop of red hair, freckles, and dancing green eyes.

"Hello, Brian!" I chirped, feeling in good spirits about the possible outcome of my actions. "Can I talk to Addie?"

Brian smiled and pulled me inside. "Just a minute, Esme." His brogue wasn't as thick as his sister's, but just enough to make him irresistibly adorable in my eyes. "Would you mind if I show you the new piece I've been workin' on?"

The Murphys had saved for two years to get Brian the violin he had so desired after they'd left Ireland and his miniature one behind. Brian played the violin beautifully, never failing to bring tears to my eyes, but at this precise moment, I just didn't have the time.

"Brian—"

"Just a minute," he promised. Then he was leading me to a chair and asking me to stay put, he'd be right back.

He was. And admittedly, the tune was both poignant and moving, not that I had expected anything different. Brian's eyes always fell closed when he played something that glorious, like he felt the music in him as much as he wanted those around him to feel it.

"Brian," I gasped. "What is it called?"

He turned red, dropping the violin from his chin and already packing it into its case. "I'd rather not say." When I'm sure my face contorted into curiosity, he flushed redder and commented idly, "I don't actually think Addie's here. I think she said somethin' about goin' to see you—"

"What?" I looked at him sharply. "Why didn't you just say that in the first place?"

I didn't give him a chance to reply. I was out of the chair in and instant, flinging open the Murphys' front door once more to ran up the hill, wondering where on Earth Addie would think to look for me.

And then, all at once, I knew.

The fact that I'd fallen from the tree hadn't changed the fact that Will, Addie, and I still enjoyed its shade more than any other tree in the whole town — the Spot, we called it. I would always be drawn back to it, for reasons I could only attribute to the event that had led me to meet the man of my dreams. And that old maple was the exact place I would look for me if I was my best friend.

I was in the grove of trees, almost all the way to our Spot…

I stopped dead at the sight before me.

In the shade of the maple tree from which I had fallen only two years before, Will was bent over Addie, her porcelain face tilted back and her plaid cap askew so that her auburn tresses flowed freely down her back. His hands cupped her cheeks, her own gripping his forearms urgently…

…Their lips pressed together…

Limp fingers released the letter I had hoped Addie would think came from Will, not caring as it slipped out of my grasp and into a muddy rut in the trail.

_How on Earth…?_

Ridiculous. This had been my— Well, not _this_ exactly. But I had known Addie and Will were destined to be together the first time they met when we were all fourteen, one of the only times Addie had ever been stunned speechless, and the first time I saw Will turn that shade of pink. I just _knew _it. Will had never been meant for me; it was the reason Father's implications had been so laughable.

But at the same time…

…_What with you being that age now…_

…_being alone…with men…_

…_people will start to talk…_

…_it just isn't right…it just isn't right…it just isn't_—

I took one step back, then another when I was satisfied that my legs would still hold me upright. I back-tracked until I was sure I was safely hidden under the foliage of another maple. Not that Addie or Will noticed my sudden arrival, in any case.

I felt like an intruder, a voyeur, when I heard Will's voice, husky and breathless, whisper, "I love you."

I could not stay here. I ran back home as fast as my legs could carry me, wondering at the sudden blur of confused tears in my eyes. Either unable or unwilling to deal with the salty tracks down my face, Father made no objection as I rushed by him and straight upstairs to my room.

By the time I made it upstairs, I realized the reason behind my tears. I was… _jealous_?

Addie and Will were in together now and I was still just Esme. I practically threw myself before my looking glass, anticipating the years of having no one to look at me the way they looked at each other stare back at me.

But looking at my reflection, I was not at all upset by what I saw.

I had waited so long for that moment to happen, I had crossed my fingers, said thousands of prayers in that regard, and now that it happened, I was… Being stupid, that's what I was doing. I was Esme, I would be Esme no matter what happened. I shouldn't let my own personal anxieties of loneliness tell me otherwise.

Half an hour later, my eyes were still red-rimmed despite my attempts to make it appear as if nothing had happened. I blamed genetics for this pale skin that showed off the slightest upset in my emotions. I suppose seeing me alone on my bed with a blotchy face tipped off Addie when she stormed up the steps.

"Esme," Addie cried rushed to me. "What's the matter? Who was it?" She rolled up she sleeves, scowling. "Whoever it was, they're goin' ta get a lesson they won't soon forget, courtesy of Adelaide Eileen Murphy."

"Nothing," I giggled. "I stubbed my toe."

Addie smacked my bedpost for good measure, giggling with me, and then looked at me with… was that _uncertainty _in her expression?

"Esme, I have somethin' ta tell you, but you have to promise me you won't be gettin' angry about it."

I held my right hand up solemnly. "Promise."

"Well, this afternoon, the strangest….most _wonderful _thing happened."

I held my breath, expecting that rush of hurt to return as she told me the story. And, I was oddly pleased to find that it didn't.

"William came and found me at the Spot and he was lookin' happier than I'd ever been seein' him and I asked him if he'd won the lottery or somethin' of that nature, and he told me he felt like he had. And then he… Oh, he pulled me to him and swung me around like I didn't weigh a thing and he asked me if I meant what I wrote. And, Esme, I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talkin' about and I tried to ask him, but I was afraid he might let me go… And, come to think, I still haven't the foggiest—"

"Addie."

"Right, right. And so I just nodded 'cause I was too dazzled to do anythin' else, Esme. And then he was… kissin' me. And, Esme, it was amazin'!" She leapt off my bed to spin in a quick circle making her hat fly into a corner. Then she clasped linked hands to her chest, her heart. "And he… he… told me he loves me."

_I know. _I almost said the words aloud, then nearly chewed my tongue off to hold them in. This was Addie's moment. _Her _time.

"You were right the whole time, Esme." _That's _what I loved hearing. "I _do _love William. I always have. Please don't be mad."

"Mad?" I gaped. "Addie, I haven't been badgering you two to get a move on for nothing."

I stood to hug her and feeling her tense against me, drew her back. "Is there more?" Tears swam up into her eyes. "Addie! Addie, what happened?"

"Esme." The tears that had threatened to fall did so at that moment and Addie smiled tremulously. "William asked me to marry him."

There was a beat of absolute silence.

I shrieked, nearly tackling her in an embrace as an endless stream of tears and laughter flowed from us both. We danced a convoluted sort of waltz about my bedroom — knocking books off of their shelves, crashing into the post of my bed, finally collapsing on the floor with mutual groans at the discomfort that melted into more delighted giggles.

"How? When? Where?" I demanded sitting up.

"One at a time, then, goose." She took a deep breath, sighing it out slowly. "He told me he had something to be showin' me and he pulled me up to the top of the hill, and I could see ev'rythin' and it was so glorious and it reminded me so much of Ireland…" Addie had closed her eyes though the pleased smile still played about her lips. "And I told him so, I did. And he told me that there weren't nothin' in this world that could compare to this sight. But when I looked at him, he wasn't even lookin' at the view. He was lookin' at _me._ And I felt like if 'tweren't for his hand holdin' onto mine, I might just float away. And then he kneeled down and I, like a bludgerin' idiot, told him he would muddy his breeches if he kept that up and he smiled and told me he loved me again. And that he wanted to marry me."

There was nothing but sheer bliss in her expression, the freckled face I knew so well glowing from the inside out.

With a wry smile, I murmured, "I take it you want me to guess what you told him."

"Why, 'yes,' of course!" Mischievous green eyes widened at me. "I may have been a bit stuffyheaded at the moment, but I'm no fool. Then he pulled me all the way to his house so he could get the ring. Oh, Esme, his Mama's ring."

I seized her left hand, the one where a sapphire gleamed brightly on the fourth finger, and dropped a kiss onto its smooth inside. "I'm so happy for you, Addie. Truly." When more moisture clouded her eyes, I laughed, "Now, none of that. Tell me, when is it you're getting married?"

"We aren't yet sure. William still has to be askin' me Da, but Da's always liked William since he took Brian under his wing. And he wants to save a bit more money up so his aunt and uncle won't be breakin' their backs to help us. But by the end of the year, he said. And then I'll be Mrs. William Dempsey."

"Am I attending this wedding?"

"Absolutely!" Addie almost shouted it in her excitement. "It won't be such a grand affair, but oh, Esme, say you'll be you maid of honor?"

I pretended to think on it, giggling when her face fell. "As if you even have to ask, silly."

**~0~**

No one had had the heart to mention to the blushing bride that her dream wedding in the middle of November would be buried in the snow.

And so Will and Addie were married on the first day of winter outdoors in the shade of the maple tree that had become so very dear to them. I stood, shivering good-naturedly amongst the priest and our families, not even caring that the tendrils of hair Addie's mother had pinned up so carefully were now falling into my eyes as the slush from the tree attacked them.

Addie was absolutely stunning. She'd worn her mother's dress with a few alterations here and there. Will's Aunt Marilyn, Mrs. Murphy, my mother and I had slaved to make the white dress almost impervious to the elements, and even now, hours since she'd put it on, it still looked amazing.

Will stood with both of his hands clasping hers, looking all the part of the dashing groom in his best suit, coattails and all.

I grinned through the entire ceremony. Long gone was the anxiety I had felt first seeing them together. Now it was all I could do to stop myself from taking credit for the whole thing.

"William, you may kiss your bride."

I held back a laugh as Brian, the best man, winced when Will pecked Addie's lips.

"May I present to you Mr. And Mrs. William Dempsey!" the priest intoned shutting his book with a clap.

And then it was all over. Or just beginning, as I liked to look at it.

The strains of giddy music, courtesy of a well-played violin and piano duet, coursed through the barn. It was difficult to remember Addie saying something about this not becoming a large affair, not when we had a fair majority of the town crammed inside the Dempsey's barn (the largest one in our area). Their cows and horses would hunker down with ours for the night; a good thing, too, as I didn't see this celebration ending anytime soon.

I'd been pinched and patted by any number of people I wasn't actually acquainted with, but each time I saw Addie and Will whirl by (they had yet to let go of one another since the dancing began), I found myself unable to muster up the will to be annoyed.

I was, however, agitated that Addie had managed to convince me to wear a corset in this dress ("Me mum's beggin' that I wear the one she wore at her weddin,' and if I have to suffer, as God as my witness, you'll be sufferin' with me!"). I felt out of breath merely walking the expanse of the barn to the table where Mrs. Dempsey, Mrs. Murphy, Mother, and I had set up a rather impressive spread of food.

_Ridiculous corset. Why not just squeeze the life right out of me? _Ah, and there were Will and Addie again to remind me why I had gone through all of this trouble.

Just then, I saw a flash of gold hair hovering high above all the others.

My breathing quickened, then sent my heart pounding evenfaster as the vice grip around my ribs refused to give.

_Could it be? Here? _

The two years had not in any way damaged my idol worship of Dr. Carlisle Cullen, nor had the deterrence from that nurse, Harriet, who claimed he had moved further north. Nor had the constant reminder that he was fourteen years my senior, or that I was deluding myself if I thought that wonderful man would ever look twice at me if I did not require medical attention.

I stumbled forward, eyes searching for the person who I had already lost in the crowd. He was gone. Or perhaps he'd never even been here.

Disappointment was like a physical blow.

I didn't hear her come up behind me, but knew the high voice when it sounded. "It'll soon be your turn," Mother said, eyes bright.

My stomach clenched at the thought, but I kept my words light. "We'll see, I guess."

Marriage was all well and good for some. For most, actually. But not for me. I could not put my finger on exactly why — maybe because for all the fluttery feelings I could see between Addie and Will, and the deeper stirrings of something amazing in my stomach at the mere thought of a certain blonde-haired doctor — I could not imagine this happy ending for me.

Even as I panicked a bit at the notion of trying to explain this concept to anyone but Addie or Will, I comforted myself with the fact that it would not be the first time I rebelled against the idea of normality.

My half-hearted reply seemed to satisfy Mother, for she strolled away. I watched as she coerced my father onto his feet and was placing his hand at her waist.

A smile blossomed on my face. For all their issues over the years, I supposed they, too, were alright together.

"Esme?"

I whirled around gaily, smiling even wider when I saw my favorite fourteen-year-old fidgeting nervously. "Oh, Brian, you look so handsome! Was that you playing the fiddle a moment ago?"

He flushed. "Thank you. And yes." His eyes shifted to his feet, strapped into the shiny shoes Will had bought him for the occasion. "May I— I mean, would you mind…maybe—" He ended awkwardly, casting a glance at the other couples swaying to the lively music on the floor.

"Brian," I began feeling my heart expand at his hopeful look, "would you honor me with a dance?"

"Would I!" he exclaimed tugging my hand excitedly.

I spent the remainder of the evening spinning circles around in the barn with a curly red head that reached only my shoulders, watching the love that emanated from Addie and Will. We exchanged partners over and over until I was dizzy. When Brian once more took my hand and clamored to me about nothing and everything, something about how Marianne (a girl who had actively pursued him all year) had stepped on his feet the entire time they'd danced, I laughed out loud, unable to hold it in.

I was happy.

**~0~**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1916**_

I hopped out of bed, dropping a quick kiss on my mother's cheek as I skipped outside to collect eggs for breakfast. As always, I swung the basket as I walked, whistling a nonsensical tune, planning to stop by the little house Addie and Will had shared for closing on three years as I did each morning.

The blue door was not locked, as usual, and let myself in, shutting the door at my back.

The radio was turned on on the Dempseys' kitchen counter, the announcer speaking drearily about the War. It was a constant presence in our lives these days, and we were all feeling its effects. The corset Addie had worn in her wedding, the one I had borrowed from Will's aunt, much of the silverware and anything and everything that could possibly be help to the American soldiers had been demanded by the government in every single town in the country.

Will had worried over and over that the war would reach its hand across the sea and pull us into the fray as well. And right he was, for after the sinking of the _Lusitania_ last year, our men were dying of mustard gas in those stinking trenches, many of them never seeing one of the scant number of our doctors stationed in Europe…

"Addie!" There was no sign of her in the kitchen, nor in the sitting room. "Addie! Addie?"

I felt no qualm opening the door to the bedroom, sure that at this point in the day, Will was down at the factory making bullets for our boys overseas.

"Addie?"

The lump beneath the sheets in the bedroom groaned something unintelligible.

"You can't still be sleeping at this hour," I laughed exasperatedly. "It's time to get up, sleepyhead." I went to rip back the covers, then saw the state of Addie's normally rich red hair. It was lank and limp, though it seemed to have pulled all the color out her face judging by the grayness of her complexion.

When she spoke, her voice was so raspy, I felt fright close a hand over my heart. "I'm not feelin' myself, Esme. I'm no company this morning.'"

Concerned, I laid a palm against her forehead. "Was it something you ate?"

"Haven't been able to eat anything a'tall," Addie murmured miserably. "Don't be mentionin' it to William. He'll just worry for no reason at all."

"Addie…"

"No sense in him worryin' when there isn't a thing he can do," she snapped. She must have seen the surprise in my stare, for her hardened face crumbled and she began to weep. "I'm sorry! I don't know what's the matter with me!"

"Shush," I murmured.

I tucked the covers around her as she continued to sniffle brokenly. "I love you as my sister, Esme."

"I love you, too, Addie. Rest, now, and you'll be alright." I pressed a kiss to her forehead, hoping my words would travel to God's ears.

I shut the door quietly behind me. My worry for Addie's well-being convinced me to finish my chores quickly and come back to be with her, maybe try something on the stove to ease her stomach since that seemed to be what was troubling her.

Brian was in the sitting room, stoking the fire when I tiptoed back to the front of the house. He had grown in the past years: his bright red hair had faded into a dusky auburn, his lanky form had lengthened and broadened so that he was much taller than I. He smiled, pure joy alighting his face as he saw me, and I recalled the boy who had been so timid in asking me to dance at his sister's wedding.

"Esme! I haven't seen you in such a time!"

I laughed at his eagerness, then shushed him, pointing a single finger in the direction of Addie's bedroom. "Only a week, Brian. Surely not so much has happened in that time?"

"Well, no," he admitted more quietly.

"And should you not be up in the city making magic with those fingers of yours?"

He glanced down at the fingers in question, as spotted with freckles as his sister's, flexing them absently. "I would, to be sure, but Will asked me to linger a bit here with Addie as she's not been feelin' well." His dimple winked. "But, by Finn, had I known you'd be comin' 'round I would have been here sooner."

Brian's charm was irresistible. "Sweet-talker," I chided. "All the little city hearts flutter. Speaking of which, is there any little chickadee who's caught your eye?" I swung my basket back over my arm, and opened the front door. Brian followed me out into the sunshine, but he was quiet for so long I turned to him, smirking. "Ah. So there is, is there?"

He reddened adorably. "Aye."

A-ha! I just had a feel for those couples destined to be together — I'd managed to pull Addie and Will together, hadn't I? — and I was feeling something in my bones about Brian as well. "Is she pretty, then?"

"Beautiful," he corrected.

"And she has more than just fluff rolling around in her head?"

"She's brilliant. Smarter than any woman I've ever known."

He was already head-over-heels for this girl. I was briefly frustrated that she couldn't see it just by looking at his face. But then, some had to be nudged, others pushed.

"Have you told her how you feel?"

"I'm not so great at that part," Brian muttered.

I sighed inwardly. He was too much like Will in that regard.

"Oh? Well, you've just got to convince her she can't live without you, Brian." I looped my arm through his when he offered it. "If she knows you at all, it won't be difficult to do."

Skepticism touched his features when he looked down at me. "Mm-hmm."

"I mean it! Tell you what, how about I sit down with her sometime and we can just let the conversation travel wherever it will: the weather, her family, what a catch you'd be…"

"Esme…" he started suddenly.

"You're too modest," I grinned. "My favorite red-head." I reached up to ruffle his hair as I always had, pouting a bit when I realized I could no longer reach. "Who gave you permission to grown up?" I demanded.

He rolled his eyes and ducked his head compliantly. He permitted me to run my hand over his head once before we arrived at the hencoop. "You'd better go and make sure your sister tries to eat something. And if she fights you, don't take no for an answer."

Brian shuddered. "She's been impossible lately. I fix her up some soup like she'll be askin' me to, then she decides she doesn't want it. Then when I drink it — because I'm not wastin' perfectly good soup when it's right there — she starts cryin' and screamin' about how I never think of anyone but myself."

I frowned. "She never—"

"—acts that way when you're around? Aye, I figured as much. But you ask Will. He'll tell you right."

I set to pondering this new evidence. But Brian had to go and I had chores to finish, breakfast to make for my father, and before too much longer, he was walking back the way we'd come.

"Goodbye, Brian!" I waved a hand enthusiastically. "I'll see if I can make a visit to meet your lady-love."

He looked at me for a moment more, stopping completely, almost as if he wished to say something, then smiled and returned the wave.

The first day of spring, when the frost had all but melted away and I could see the little yellow blossoms peeping up through the frozen ground, always put me in a serene mood. The chickens eyed me distrustfully as I spread the seed, but gave way to their hunger eventually and abandoned their eggs as always.

My basket full, I started up the trail to the house, surprised to see a man I didn't recognize walking in the opposite direction toward me.

The stranger adjusted his hat, striding stiffly past me on the walk, ignoring my bright, "Good morning." Shrugging, I thought nothing more of it.

Father was reading over a piece of paper at the dining room table, smiling vaguely when I danced in swinging my basket. "Fresh eggs," I said cheerfully.

"Scrambled, please," he murmured.

"As if there's any other way," I chimed. I set to greasing the pan, humming idly to the hypnotic _tap tap tap _of Father's boot against the floor.

"You're in a mood," he said, still not looking up.

I hummed a bit louder, cracking an egg into the pan and smiling at its satisfying sizzle. "I might even make some for myself. Oh! And for Addie, too. Eggs should be easy on her stomach."

"She's sick?"

"A little under the weather," I replied. "Will has Brian staying with her to keep her company."

We remained in comfortable silence (beside the crackling of the eggs on the stove) before a thought occurred to me.

"Father," I commented in an offhand way. "That man on the walk. Did he need something from us?"

Father did not reply right away. The silence stretched on for so long, I turned from the stove where the eggs were in all likelihood burning to a crisp. "Father?" I queried more softly.

I watched him steel himself, sitting taller and making his face emotionless the way I'd seen him do after one of our cows had died.

"That was Charles Evenson. Me and his father were friends a while ago. Garrett Evenson lent me some of the money to buy the farm."

I nodded, somewhat uncomprehendingly. Nice as it was to have a name to put to the face — although, now that I recalled, that face had seemed more than a touch…unfriendly — Father still had not answered my question.

"So…" I prompted gently ignoring the stink of the burnt eggs.

This time Father could not look me in the face. He dropped his gaze, his shoulders sagging a little.

"Charles Evenson asked for your hand in marriage, Esme. And I accepted."

* * *

**A/N: Wow. This is a lot longer than I anticipated it being when I started to revise a few things. I don't think you all mind, but if the length if bothersome, I'll be happy to cut them down a bit; I'll just have to…recalculate a bit and figure out where I should cut off the next chapters. **

**But anyway, I liked writing Esme's life before things start to take a turn for the worst, which, now that you've "met" Charles, they do. I'm always happy to send out a preview of the next chapter to anyone who asks. Leave me a review, if you will; they're much appreciated! Love, Cricket :D**


	5. the reality

**A/N: Sorry for the wait, everyone! I realized there were some issues with the timing in this chapter, so I had to fix some things about it… Ha, and going back, I realized in the last chapter I must have spelled "surreptitiously" incorrectly on Word since it changed it to "scrumptiously," which, if you read it in context, is a bit…disturbing. In any case, many thanks to Wikipedia for the WWI information; you'll see this chapter it becomes vitally important. Oh, and, to clarify, the last portion of last chapter also takes place in December. Happy reading!**

**disclaimer: wishin' and hopin' and prayin' and dreamin'… nope, Twilight still isn't mine.**

* * *

"A gentleman is simply a patient wolf."  
—_Lana Turner_

**~0~**

**the reality**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1916**_

_**December**_

Charles Evenson was not an unattractive man. He was just…ordinary.

Two days prior I had stormed to my room, refusing to come outside and only allowing Addie in to discuss what had happened. Addie had been optimistic and I, who had been up until this point the one to look for the silver lining in all things, wanted none of it.

Then this morning, my mother had all but shoved me into the bathroom, stripping me and dumping water over me and telling me to get ready before I even knew what was happening.

…Because we had a _guest._

And sure enough, when I had trudged down the stairs like I was on my way to meet the hangman, there was the man I'd only glimpsed on the walk two days ago.

Perhaps ordinary wasn't the correct word for it.

"Dull" suited him better.

His hat was off this time, I noted. His hair was a brown that reminded me of the old crumbling wallpaper in the schoolhouse I had attended all of those years before. There was an unbecoming gray tinge to his skin that made me shy away from his handshake when he had first offered it.

My parents had us all seated in the sitting room on the sofas that faced one another: me sandwiched between my two enthusiastic parents and Charles on the opposite side. If he was fazed by the arrangement, where all three of us were staring at him — Mother and Father in interest, me in distaste — that bland face showed no traces of it.

Before I knew it, I had spent more that twenty minutes analyzing him, searching for some point of interest in this man who had asked for my hand. What on Earth could he want with me?

I wanted to find something wrong with him — maybe that he lacked manners, that he was coarse, or rude — something that would justify me refusing to ever see him again.

Believe me, I spent that hour scrutinizing him unflinchingly.

His fingernails were trimmed. His ears were clean. His face was shaven.

His face wasn't ill proportioned, nor did he have any blemishes.

He hadn't tracked dirt inside. He didn't slouch. He didn't slurp at Mother's coffee.

I completely ignored the banal conversation happening around me and focused on him. He wore a suit, not exceedingly expensive in appearance. His shoes were black leather, worn from use, but not overly so.

His face was not unkind, but there was nothing unique at all about it. He could be any one of the male dolls Mrs. Murphy painted for the little girls down the way. Unseeing, uncaring…

There _had _to be something the matter with him. _Something _to explain why I was behaving as I was.

And when Addie arrived, waving cheerily at my parents, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Good afternoon to ye, Platts. How do you fare on this fine— Well, now." I watched the green orbs absorb Charles Evenson, who nodded politely to her. And I watched that same look I'm sure was painted on my face touch hers. "Who is this?"

Mother almost fell over herself to introduce him. "This is Mr. Evenson."

Addie made no motion to extend her hand. Her normally lively voice was flat. "Charmed." Then she turned her gaze to me. "I was just comin' by to get Esme's help. With that thing we were talkin' about."

What thi— Addie widened her eyes at me meaningfully.

"Oh!" I jumped up. "Yes! That."

Mother looked more than a bit disgruntled, but could do no more than glare at me with a look of 'We'll discuss this later' simmering in her eyes. Father frowned as well, but said nothing.

And Mr. Evenson…

Something disturbing came and went in his eyes so quickly I had to question if I'd ever seen it.

"Good afternoon, Esme," he said quietly.

I fought back a shudder of disgust as those colorless lips formed my name. I didn't reply as Addie closed the door firmly at our backs.

I'd barely managed to drag her out of earshot when she fairly shouted, "That's _him_?"

I nodded curtly.

"Is he…ill?"

The giggles poured out without my consent. "So you noticed something's the matter with him, too?"

Addie stopped stock still. "You haven't accepted, have you?"

"No!"

"Good." She nodded definitively. Addie shrugged her shoulders as if she'd gotten a chill. "He's sort of…creepy, wouldn't you say?"

And I laughed joyously, hugging her and twirling with her in the snow, because she'd finally found the word that accurately described Charles Evenson, the one that had evaded my mind's grasp

We strolled arm in arm in companionable silence down the lane and were almost inside the Dempseys' house when I saw Dr. Godwin walking in the opposite direction, his head bowed as he fiddled with his medicine bag. I began to raise my arm in greeting and found it tightly tethered in Addie's grasp.

"Esme," she whispered urgently

Dr. Godwin took the matter out of my hands. "Good afternoon, Miss Platt. Mrs. Dempsey."

I opened my mouth to reply, noting to my astonishment that Addie flush red. Dr. Godwin had treated me my whole life, and Addie every year since she'd arrived in Columbus (for all things but my broken leg), and never had she reacted to him this way.

Even stranger, Dr. Godwin's beady eyes behind thick glasses honed in on Addie's embarrassment. "Are you following the instructions I gave you, Mrs. Dempsey?"

Addie's voice was almost inaudible. "Aye."

"And drinking milk with your meals instead of just water?"

"Yes."

"And you've abstained from—"

Addie cut him off. "Yes, sir!"

My incredulous stare flashed back and forth between the two.

Dr. Godwin beamed, showing off a few missing teeth. "Fine, then. I hate to dash, ladies, but Jim Douglas sliced his hand on a plow this morning. Be sure you get inside and get something hot inside of you." He aimed the last bit of this statement toward Addie, then he tipped his hat again and walked on in the snowscape leaving us standing in the doorway.

Addie drew me inside and sat on the sofa, studiously ignoring my gaze. "So what are we—"

"What was that?" I interrupted.

"What was what?"

"Addie…"

"What?"

"The doctor. You've seen the doctor? About you not feeling well?"

Addie toyed with her apron. "'S possible," she muttered hardly moving her mouth.

"And…?"

"I'm sick, I am."

I felt my heart stop. My mouth opened, chattering incessantly. "Well, what's he doing whistling out there, then? Can they cure it? Did he leave medicine? Should I run back and get him?" I didn't wait for her reply, standing at once. I was halfway to the door when Addie laughed long and hard.

"Are you delirious?" I demanded. I rushed back to her to lay a hand to her forehead and nearly bowled her over off of the couch.

"Would you—" She slapped my hands away, rolling off the couch anyway with a thud. "Stop that!"

I stared.

Breathing hard, Addie managed to push herself up, adjusting her hat. "Doc said it'll only last for nine months, and then I'll be fine. Well." She paused to consider. "Prob'ly closer to seven."

I stared.

Addie was leaning back on her hands, smiling cheekily from her position on the floor. "But the feelin' poorly in the mornin' is somethin' I'll be dealin' with for a while, I'm afraid."

I stared.

"You dunce," she announced grinning. "I'm havin' a baby."

The noises we made as we danced around the Dempseys' living room probably made some of the neighbors debate stopping by to be sure we were alright.

A baby. A _baby!_

Tired finally by our giddy fit, we sank back onto the sofa. Addie tilted her head back and sighed with her eyes closed looking utterly at peace. "Does Will know?"

"Aye." Addie cracked an eye and I could see the happiness brimming in the emerald depths. "We were to tell you together tonight, but seein' as how you managed to catch Doc, I figured I better tell you now afore you had every doctor in the Midwest hikin' up here to see what was the matter with me."

Thinking back to my panic had us laughing again.

"Esme," she murmured finally looking at me fully. "I'm scared."

There were no words to reply. I leaned over to her and pulled her to me.

I was three months older than Addie and in the close to seven years I'd known her since her family moved to Columbus from Ireland when I we were fourteen, it was always me she'd come to for advice. Me, who had experience with everything that she had troubles with: when her cycle had first begun, when she asked me about how best to get the wine we weren't supposed to know about out of her mother's rug…

But I knew nothing about this. Nothing at all.

And I was scared, too.

I held onto her for both of our sakes.

**~0~**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1917**_

_**January**_

Charles Evenson did not discuss marriage with me. Neither he nor my parents made any mention of the word, but it hovered in the air in our home nonetheless.

Mother had been nothing but generous about buying new fabric and leaving "presents" hanging over my door. The dresses were lovelier than anything I owned and I accepted them warily.

And so began the procession of gifts. Only not from Mother. From _him. _

A spray of roses that Mother placed on the dinner table until they wilted. A set of white gloves, eminently impractical on the farm, but that Mother accepted on my behalf when all I did was set my mouth into a straight line.

When my birthday passed early in the month, the necklace sitting on my bed, gaudy gold gleaming in the sunlight, had made me scream aloud. I ran quickly to the pond beyond the hill, panting with exertion. With a groan of disgust, I launched the necklace into the water, taking delight in its journey to dusky depths.

Mr. Evenson never mentioned the necklace. He never mentioned my ill behavior toward him in the slightest.

But he returned the next day.

And the after that.

And the days following that.

He stopped coming at a regular time, often finding me out of the house whenever I could anticipate his arrival. Instead, he came just before dinner, effortlessly cajoling my mother into a seat at the table. He sat beside me every time, not glancing at me once, but chewing slowly, the muscles working under that gray skin, as if there was nothing the matter.

Or he'd arrive just before we departed for church, asking if he might escort me and knowing fully that I couldn't object with my parents looking on expectantly. Then I'd be stuck bristling at his very gray presence sitting unaffected beside me for two hours.

I woke up one day to collect eggs and he walked with me to the hencoop, saying not a word. I couldn't even stop by Addie and Will's to say hello, not wanting to drag some…_stranger _into their home just because my parents had all but invited him to sleep in ours.

The scowl on my face could have melted ice.

Mr. Evenson' visits became more infrequent, less directed toward me entirely. He brought my mother a handful of flowers one day, instantly putting him in her good books for life, listened to Father's musings about how he wanted to possibly buy a bull next year…

When he spoke to me, it was about trivial subjects — always though, he managed to finagle to conversation so that my monosyllabic answers didn't matter in the slightest: his thoughts on the weather, the War, the farm, the town…

And every time he left, Mother would smile secretively and nod her head at me.

By the month following our first encounter, it suddenly occurred to me.

I was being…_courted. _The very thought of it made me want to scream and jump up and down in my fury.

I spoke sullenly of the our irritating meetings to Addie and Will time and time again.

"There's just something…off about him," Will said thoughtfully.

True enough, but still a bit of an understatement in my opinion.

Brian, passing by with a load of firewood in his arms, grumbled unintelligibly.

Also true, but I would think my feelings about Mr. Evenson were more coherent.

"He's a snake," Addie spat disdainfully. "I don't like him."

And in those words, Addie had summed up my entire opinion on the matter.

But still, with my parents in such a tizzy around him, and me not able to last three minutes with him without wanting to tear my hair out, I was as of yet unable to come up with a suitable course of action. Will, Addie, and Brian may have been able to see it, but that odd characteristic of Mr.

I rose with good spirits one morning, happy with the fact that I couldn't hear that still unfamiliar male voice commenting quietly to my mother in the kitchen. The house, to my supreme delight, was almost silent.

"Esme." Mother appeared at the doorway just as I was lacing my boots.

I didn't even look up. "Good morning, Mother. I'm just off to see Addie. Was there something you needed?"

"_These _came in the mail for you."

She threw an envelope onto the floor with violence that had me starting. The address was scribed neatly on the front of it.

Hands on her hips, face pink with agitation, I noticed that her hair was coming loose from the pins she put into it every morning. "Just what are these people doing writing to you?" she demanded.

I could not respond. I had no reply that would possibly make the situation any better.

"A teacher_, _Esme? A _teacher?_" Her voice had risen to an entirely new octave. "In _Oregon?_"

I had written a letter of inquiry to a union of teachers whose ad had appeared in Father's newspaper. They were offering positions for women to move West and teach children in schoolhouses, with possibilities of promotion to higher level teaching.

I'd merely been curious as to the specifics not available in the advertisement had left out. And really, with Charles Evenson "dropping by" now at least four times a week, in the heat of the moment, I had felt the urge to seek out my options. Even if it would mean distancing myself from my family.

I had calmed down enough to realize that it really wasn't what I wanted the second I had delivered it to the post office, but before I could even voice the words, Mother was ordering me to pick up the letter, had seized my arm and was dragging me down the steps to the kitchen where my Father was seated reading the newspaper.

"John? John!"

Father looked up with an air of resignation. "What is it, Rebecca?"

"_This!" _The word was only a squeak as she tossed the envelope onto the table before him.

"A letter?" Father put in confusedly.

"_Read it_," Mother hissed in a low voice.

Father tore open the seal and perused the contents of the letter slowly. When his eyes, tired and upset at the same time, met mine, shame filled me. He made a motion with his hand that had the cold one latched to me fall away. "Esme, what do you mean by this?"

"I just— "

Mother answered for me. "She means to throw away Mr. Evenson's proposal and go live out in the wilderness! Alone!"

"I— "

"Esme." Father's quiet tone pulled more guilt out of me than the shrieking of my mother. "Is this true?"

Truly, not anymore. But I could only utter one word. "Yes."

"Why?" he wanted to know.

I slanted my eyes at my furious mother and decided to speak truthfully. "I…do not wish to marry."

Father looked a bit more at ease with my response that Mother, who promptly turned purple and opened her mouth to speak (screech). He held up a hand, stopping her immediate reply.

"You'll have to marry someday, Esme," Father countered gently. "Why not marry someone you trust?"

I wanted to contest to that on two counts.

One: the fact that I had to marry. Why? I'd made up my mind about that subject before Addie and Will's wedding. I simply didn't need to marry. It couldn't be for everyone. Plenty of women had abstained from marriage: Jane Austen had never married, and yet she was so successful! I certainly wouldn't _die_ from never entering wedlock. But I couldn't entirely convince away the little pang when I realized I'd never experience Addie's bliss, the happiness of bringing a child into the world.

I shook it off with difficulty and concentrated on my other objection to Father's words.

Two: I did not trust Charles Evenson.

I wasn't yet sure what about him irked me so. If nothing else, I was not myself around him — I was ever focused on somehow raising a shield against a person for the very first time in my life. A person, mind you, that presented no visible threat other than possibly boring me to tears.

And even _that _thought was unlike me. Mr. Evenson had strolled into my existence bringing with him all the malignant feelings I had yet to experience in my twenty-two years.

I was trembling with the effort it took not to explode with everything I was feeling. But they, they who had married so young, who had been born in a time so different from mine, would never (could never) understand.

"There, now." Father looked pleased. "We all know this teaching thing was just passing fancy, right, Rebecca?"

Mother made a strangled noise of assent. I said nothing.

But he just wouldn't leave it be. "It wouldn't do for a woman alone out there, far away from any protection or family. Especially when she has such a fine choice waiting here for her."

I resented it. All of it. My parents' blindness to this intangible… _thing _that made Charles Evenson the last person I wished to marry; the fact that they _still _felt the need to make up my mind for me, long after I'd already made it up for myself…

The feelings bubbled in my breast, threatening to spill out words I would later regret. I turned on my heel and fled from the room, ignoring my mother's shrill demands that I get back here this instant, Esme!

I ran and ran and ran until my legs wouldn't hold me anymore, smoothing the lines of my face so that when I strolled into the Dempseys' front door, Addie suspected nothing.

**~0~**

_**March**_

Tea with my best friend's mother was probably the only way I knew how to calm myself. Whenever I'd been out of sorts as we grew up, she'd drawn me into the kitchen and sat me down with a cup of tea (brewed the Irish way, of course) and let me babble on until my cup was empty and my problems gone.

Will and I were both concerned about Addie's health — the morning sickness hadn't passed and even the slightest thing upset her — and I knew very well having her worry about my issues would only make things worse.

Issues that were once again tied to the ever-present Charles Evenson.

I had hoped Mr. Evenson would realize I had no warm feelings toward him and continue on with his dull existence elsewhere, but I was sadly mistaken.

There was only one thing I'd managed to glean from his ignorance of my every rebuff: Charles Evenson did not give up easily. He was quietly, maddeningly relentless. Boring, yes. Fickle, no.

And every now and again I'd catch that terrifying gleam in his eye and have to question whether I was just making things up now to avoid having to…

I couldn't even say the words.

I might have been able to, had he made mention of his intentions, but we carried on with him appearing like a ghost in my life several times a week and me trying not to shout into his face exactly what I thought of him.

I think he knew — I saw it in those calculating colorless eyes — that when he someday asked me to marry him, I was going to refuse.

And that would be that.

And so he had not said a single word on the subject.

Torturing me by making me wait longer and longer and _longer _for the day I could finally boot him out of my life.

It had gotten to be too much yesterday when Mother had insisted he accompany us into town on errands (which she never did herself under any other circumstances, and always sent me out for) and I spent an entire day with him.

Gray. Awful. Stoic. Creepy.

And so, as I had numerous times beforehand, I found myself knocking on the Murphys' kitchen door and being pulled into the warmth of Mrs. Murphy's embrace.

We sat at the kitchen table on opposite sides each letting a cup of tea warm our frozen fingers. Only… Today, Mrs. Murphy seemed a bit… distracted.

She listened, all right, but her eyes looked faraway, and her responses were almost automatic.

"Mrs. Dempsey." I set the tea down, taking in that expression that belied a desire to make it seem as if everything was alright, when in actuality it wasn't. "What's the matter?"

"I don't mean to be burdenin' you with my troubles, Dearie." The woman I considered a second mother patted my hand, yet again consoling me when it was _she_ facing something dire.

"Mrs. Murphy… You won't be burdening me. Maybe I can help."

She stood from the table, crossing to the sink and staring blankly out of the window above it. Out of either habit or necessity, she picked up a plate and set to scrubbing it in slow circles. "This war…" Mrs. Murphy trailed off uncertainly. "It just takes over ev'rythin', don't it?"

I didn't need to answer. We both knew the answer to that question.

"I… And please don't be tellin' this to Addie." She sounded so tired. "It wouldn't do nothin' but harm to have it keepin' her up at night."

Keeping a secret from Addie was near impossible. How many times had I been itching to confess that the letter she still had no idea about had been penned by my hand, now nearly three years afterward? But Mrs. Murphy's anxious hands had stilled on the glass and I felt compelled to agree to her exhausted request.

A relieved sigh escaped her lips. "It's glad I am that William has his job at the factory. Even though he put his name same as ev'ryone else on those blasted draft cards, he's safe."

It had never occurred to me that Will had filled out one of those cards. I'd gone into town a few months ago to buy more bread for the house and had had to ask about the long line of men streaming out of the post office and wrapping around the corner. "They're signing us up to fight, Missy," a bearded gentleman had informed me. "If they need more troops across the waters there, they'll be calling on us!"

The man had seemed proud, jabbing a finger in his chest at his words.

I thought the entire thing was silly.

A lottery process, they called it. All men, ages eighteen through thirty-five, had been required to register their names and, in the event of a shortage of soldiers — a phrase so inhuman and awful to me because it minimized the extent of the damage, that men were _dying_ there in numbers so great they couldn't refill their spots quickly enough — more men would be forced overseas.

I turned fully in the chair to stare at her back. "Will…signed on?"

"Aye. What choice had he? Very nearly made his uncle sign, as well, only that he's just over the age barrier."

Fear closed like a wave over my head. Will was my age. _My age. _And that was far too young to be strapping on a gun and one of those hats that always reminded me of turtles and… "Mrs. Murphy, does that mean— "

She wouldn't even let me say the words aloud. "No. Not while William still has his job. Not while he's still makin' ammunitions for the army and those folks in Washington thinks he's 'useful' right where he is."

It was my turn to be relieved. "But," I ventured softly, "it isn't Will you're concerned about, is it?"

Mrs. Murphy let out a half-laugh that was anything but amused. "No, 'tisn't. You know me too well, Dearie." She let out a deep breath that had her shoulders sagging. "It's Brian."

The deep laughter of that freckled face as we danced in the bar where he played his violin every night echoed eerily in my head. No. _No. _"Mrs. Murphy— "

I was cut off by her strangled sob. "He's just a boy! _My _boy!"

My mind worked frantically. With more hope in my voice than I felt, I said, "But Brian's just seventeen; the draft will be gone, the War will be over…"

"And if it isn't?"

Why did we ask questions no one knew the answers to, I wondered. "What does Brian think?" I asked hoarsely. She didn't respond. "Mrs. Murphy?"

The words were garbled by tears. "He— He's talkin' about just servin' his time and comin' back home."

But we knew without voicing the thought that very few of the men who had departed from Columbus in 1915 had returned at all. Many of them left behind families who still held on to the hope that they weren't dead even though their letters had stopped; many of these families would never learn, as there was no one keeping the record of their fallen sons and brothers and husbands to send word home, and absolutely no possibility of a home burial.

Brian wasn't made for fighting. He was big and broad-shouldered and strong like his father, like Will, like Mr. Dempsey, but he wasn't made to do any sort of hard labor with those glorious hands. And the Murphys had recognized that those big hands were meant to create something wonderful, that that was Brian's _gift. _

My mind flashed over and over to images of Brian as we all grew, gently coercing a song out of his violin, the cheeky smile he had when he played something fast and fun in his bar, how his eyes fluttered quickly when the song managed to pull tears out of him…

If ever there was a person less suited for war, it was Brian.

"The factory," I gasped desperately. "Can't Will do something? Get Brian a position there?"

"Brian'd never be doin' it," Mrs. Dempsey cried. "That foolish mule; I've already asked! And he holds up that fiddle and he says to me, 'Ma, you can't be askin' me to give up my life.' But he don't understan' that he's askin' _me _to give up his life, and I won' do it!"

She was sobbing fully now, and I sprung from my seat to wrap trembling arms around her as she dropped the single plate with a crash and slid helplessly to the floor. I slid with her and sat among the shards of porcelain until she had quieted. Then, not unlike her daughter, I tucked her into her bed, drawing the blinds closed.

I passed the cross that hung above the kitchen doorway. I had passed it a million times in my lifetime, but had never been as drawn to it as I was in that moment as worries for the people I loved most dearly in this world threatened to consume me.

I knelt before it, bowed my head, and prayed.

**~0~**

_**June**_

Mrs. Dempsey, my source of instant comfort, was now naught but a bundle of nerves, and my troubles — though they seemed numerous from my standing — were nothing compared to hers. And so I had restrained myself from appearing at her doorstep that morning and detoured to the Spot.

I sat alone for near two hours, nibbling absently at the apple I'd swiped from the kitchen that morning.

"Your father told me I might find you here."

The words startled me, dropping the half-eaten apple clean out of my hands.

My eyes closed involuntarily, offering up a silent plea to the heavens that I was somehow mistaken about the owner of that voice. And yet, when I creaked open an eyelid, who should I find standing there but the one person I wished would simply evaporate from my world like water?

My…_suitor._

I clenched my fists in hot rage. How was it that not three years prior, Father was lecturing me about how it wasn't seemly to be meeting men on my own, and now he was sending them out to corner me? I'm sure my face was anything but demure now, but I managed to stand and nod to him in greeting. "Good afternoon, Mr. Evenson."

"Charles, if you don't mind." Even now, to accompany the words that were almost friendly, he would not smile.

"Charles, then." There. I'd eked out six entire words without a single fallacy in my manners, and under the circumstances, I couldn't will myself to try any harder. For all that he'd asked for my hand, the decision was still mine. "If you'll excuse me, I'm to off join the Dempseys for lunch."

I turned away, stooping to pack the wayward apple into my sack. A frustrated sigh mounted in me as I realized the only way out of the grove was past him, but resolved myself to not let this petty niggling in the back of my mind hinder my escape. I had almost passed him, when one of those gray hands darted out to grab my upper arm.

I looked up at him in alarm, not entirely covering the noise of painful shock. He dropped his hand away in an instant. The silence stretched awkwardly and I saw him pull in breath sharply.

"Just a moment, please, Esme." Then, not harshly, he murmured, "I have the distinct impression that you dislike me."

He was brighter than he looked. _How unkind. _I sighed mentally, batting away the urge to admit to his claim because this may have been the first time in the seven months since I'd met him that I'd been given the opportunity to speak openly in more than a yes or no. "That's not true, Mr. Evenson." Then, to bolster my lie, I added, "I hardly know you."

"This is true." He came to stand behind me, so I could not even attempt to read that stoic expression. Nor would I turn around; I simply wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he had unnerved me. "I do, however, know a good deal about you."

I wasn't sure I wanted him to clarify.

He changed the subject smoothly. "You've never asked me what I do for a living."

It was true. I hadn't. Not because I had forgotten, but because I didn't wish to know. The less I knew about this man who had come into my life out of no where, the less guilty I would feel about pushing him back into the obscurity from whence he'd come.

Still, politeness pulled the words out of my mouth against my will. "Would you tell me?"

"I manage a factory. The one in town, actually."

I absorbed this information, then cleanly erased it from my memory with no remorse. "Hmm."

"It's actually the same factory your friend's husband works at. Addie, I think her name is. And her husband. William." I tensed at how horrid their names sounded being formed by that mouth that never even quirked in amusement. "Am I wrong?"

It was a physical battle not to turn and face him then, to see exactly what he was playing at. "You aren't."

"You all have been friends for quite some time, to hear tell of it in town. They were married three years ago, weren't they?"

I bobbed my head once.

"How…fortunate that you've managed to remain together," he drawled. If anyone else had heard him, he would have sounded nothing more than politely inquisitive. "What with the War moving jobs all over the country. Or, actually, _out _of the country."

Something serpentine slithered suddenly around my heart as I recalled the conversation with Mrs. I did not reply this time, but he did not seem to require my response.

"It would certainly be…terrible. If William Dempsey lost his job at the factory, would it not? Especially if the rumors are true that they're expecting their first child."

I stopped breathing altogether as the snake squeezed tighter.

"Who knows where else he may find work?" I heard the fabric of his suit jacket shift up and down in a shrug. "Certainly not in Columbus."

I turned to face him. His expression never changed under my disbelieving glare, ever the calm, polite drivel he had spoon-fed my parents. One of the men in my life was already in peril of being caught in the net of the Draft; now I had to be worried over the one who I thought was absolutely safe? I opened and closed my mouth several times before I could figure out how to speak again. "What are you saying?"

"Come now, Esme. Don't be coy. It isn't becoming on you." That flash of menace I'd seen in our living room all those weeks ago was back. He was not even bothering to hide it at this point. "You know exactly what I mean."

He knew my weakness. He had bided his time, just waiting, waiting... I had done everything in my power to avoid spending more than an two hours at a time in his presence, and yet he somehow knew of my bond with Addie and Will, how my heart would break if we were apart when we'd been together as a unit for so long. Their marriage had not disturbed that deep friendship. But I knew, they knew, _he _knew how damaging _this_ possibility would be. For all of us.

I thought of those women who showed the black-and-white photos of their deceased husbands to their children in vain attempts to keep their memory alive.

I thought of the little life blooming inside of Addie and how it deserved to walk this Earth knowing it had the love of both she and Will.

_Manager_. Charles was the _manager. _He had the power to make it happen. That guileless face would manage to convince everyone that Will had committed some unpardonable sin and that the price would naturally be his job. And Addie was already showing. Even if Will would allow her to work, there was no place in town that would hire a pregnant women. Forward-thinking Columbus was not.

For the first time since I met him, Charles seemed amused. A corner of his mouth ticked slightly. "There now," he murmured in satisfaction. "You're all caught up."

"What…" I trailed off as my throat closed convulsively. "What do you want from me?"

"Marry me."

"That's blackmail," I accused.

He shrugged again, an arrogant rise and fall of his shoulders. "Call it what you will."

"Why do you want me?" I cried.

"Every man needs a wife. To run his household, tend to his needs, bear his children." The words would have normally had blood pooling in my cheeks, but he was close enough now that I could see my reflection in his eyes, still drawn and white.

"You're just delaying, Esme. The choice is yours."

It wasn't. Damn him, it wasn't at _all _my choice. He was practically dangling my happiness off of a cliff, demanding that I make that "choice" to save it or not.

My head and my heart were in complete accordance.

"Alright."

He scrutinized me carefully. "Alright?"

Every single weight I had ever carried in my twenty-two years bore down on me in the moment under his uncompromising stare. I was powerless to do anything but bow my head in defeat. The words were so soft, I could hardly hear them:

"I will marry you."

**~0~**

_I was dreaming._

_I was sitting in the Spot when a shadow covered my book. _Charles, _I thought with a shudder._

_The slow, deliberate voice sounded close to laughter. "Is this spot taken?"_

_I cast disbelieving eyes up into the face of Dr. Cullen. Or, anyway, as glorious an image of him as my mind could conjure. The same gold hair, the same gold eyes, the same amusedly serious expression…_

_I saw him every night, and was still dumbfounded by his sheer beauty. We had very close to the same conversation each night, and yet I was still eager to have it, to sit beside him and stare at him to my heart's content._

_Mouth slightly agape, I shook my head and nearly cried when he folded his tall form to sit cross legged beside me._

"_How are you, Miss Platt?" He always asked me the same thing, every night. My subconscious was not very creative, unfortunately._

_I hedged on the answer. In my dreams, I never revealed to him my real troubles. The likes of Dr. Cullen should never have to hear anything unhappy, and I certainly wouldn't be the one to tell him. "I'm fine," I responded._

"_And your friend is well, also? Addie?"_

_He always remembered Addie's name, too._

"_She's doing wonderfully." About this, I had no trouble speaking. It never occurred to me to hide anything about Addie or Will or anyone else from him. Just me. "She's expecting, now, you know."_

_Dr. Cullen smiled, flashing me the dimple in his chin. "That's lovely, Miss Platt."_

_Our hands were lying so close in the grass, close enough that I could blame it on happenstance if my pinky brushed his. Even as my mind started to draw the comparison between Dr. Cullen and Charles, I stopped it. _

_Dr. Cullen's hand was pale, but beautifully so. This was my dream, my head, and I controlled the puppet strings here._

_My hand twitched in anticipation._

_I inhaled deeply, inching my hand across the grass._

_The moment I touched him, Dr. Cullen began to fade. He was sitting right there _— right there! — _and I could see the rest of the grove through him. His hair, which had been highlighted by the sun, no longer shone._

"_Dr. Cullen_—" _I began frantically._

"_You didn't tell me, Miss Platt." How had I managed to concoct that disapproving tone?_

"_I don't_—"

"_You didn't tell me that you were _engaged_." He said the words as if they cost him dearly. The betrayal in his eyes was another element I hadn't known my brain could create._

"_Stop! Stop it!" I cried out trying to wrench myself up from my position to throw myself at him, anything to prevent him from leaving. He wasn't even fighting whatever force was rendering him nearly transparent, just staring back at me with that look of 'I expected better from you.' "Don't go!"_

_He frowned. The little lines that appeared on his forehead ached for me to reach up a hand and smooth them away, but my hands and rear were glued to the ground, and no matter how violently I tugged, they wouldn't budge._

"_You're to be married now, Miss Platt." His eyes had that same vague sadness I had seen in them three years before. "Goodbye."_

**~0~**

Before that night, I would not have thought it possible to cry in one's sleep.

**~0~**

_**August**_

The trunk that had sat at the foot of my bed all my life sat with its mouth gaping wide open. As a little girl, I'd often wondered what treasures hid inside it, and was sadly disappointed when Mother informed me that it wasn't what _was _inside that mattered, but what _I _would fill it with someday.

I can almost guarantee that I'd have figured some way to dispose of the trunk had I known what it was I'd be filling it with.

My dresses, every single one I owned, lay spread out on my bed. Ones I had completely forgotten about, ones that I had worn so many times they were almost threadbare, one I detested, and ones I loved. The linens Mother must have been sewing since my birth were amongst them, along with handkerchiefs, towels, a bit of silverware…

_They _were the things to fill my trunk to the top. They were the things I would carry away from my birth home and take with me to a house I wished would burn to the ground and save me from all of this.

The French referred to it as a _trousseau. _I referred to it as the key in the lock of the end of life as I knew it.

Addie had elected to stay my last night in my home with me. Even though her belly was now showing more than just a little and we'd in all likelihood end up plastered to one another huddling together on the narrow mattress, I was grateful that I would have something to cling to in the night when the nightmares (another novelty as of late) occurred.

I put in the trunk the blue dress, the one I had been wearing so long ago when I broke my leg.

Addie stooped as far as her stomach would let her and set it back on the bed.

Smiling sadly, I picked it back up, dropping it into the bottom of the trunk.

Addie scowled and scooped it back up, flinging it onto the bed with force.

When my hand reached for it again, she made a noise like steam escaping a teapot.

"Addie," I half-laughed. "You're not being very helpful."

When she spoke up, her voice, unlike mine, held the true desperation of this moment.

"Don't do this, Esme. There's still a chance to be changin' your mind."

"Addie—"

"Ask yourself, Esme. Do you love 'im?"

Furious that she would dare speak to me about love at a time like this, when I was all set to sacrifice any hope for that, I bit out, "Not everyone has that option, Adelaide."

"Don't you be jerkin' your chin at me!" Addie, rather than being chastised at my tone as I had hoped, crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. "Can you find fault with me for wantin' nothin' but the best for you? You aren't in love with Charles Evenson."

"And how do you know that?"

"I know _you_."

I wished I could convey the information. My mind screamed at me to tell her, that somehow we would muddle through it somehow as we always had. I was so close to uttering my shame until I saw how she unconsciously rubbed at her stomach. Inside, somewhere inside there, there was something wonderful, innocent, still pure and untouched by the deeds of this world.

Something I wanted to protect as much as those who had created it.

And my decision could take them all away from me in an instant. I did not doubt Charles' words now, even months after he had first uttered them.

Will could leave us like all those other men who piled into the big truck that drove them far away from Columbus; Addie would be… inconsolable. The baby. Oh, the _baby_.

My fears from that first day when I'd seen them together in the Spot swam over me again. I would be alone. I would be _alone._

They couldn't leave me here by myself.

The tears came too quickly as of late, too quietly for me to bat them away as I had become so accustomed to doing. "Addie, please." I was asking her for so much: to bear witness to my lies before God, to push aside her every correct instinct that was telling her something was amiss, to just let me do what was necessary to secure what scant slice of happiness was still mine.

I could all but feel our twin anxieties cloying the air of the room.

"No matter what happens, Esme…" She had to pause and steady her voice. "I will be thinkin' of what you want. If marryin' Mr. Evenson is what you want, even if it's just for right now… I'll be behind you."

I wasn't sure what about her words was more heartbreaking: that I'd managed to convince her that this was what I wanted…

Or that Addie still held firmly to the belief that I deserved better.

**

* * *

**

A/N: I hate to admit it, but it's all pretty much downhill from here. Charles is… not a nice guy. Actually, he's worse than that, but I'll let you all read for yourselves. Questions, comments, criticisms are always welcome, as are requests for a sneak peek of the next chapter. Leave me a review and let me know what you thought. Love, Cricket.


	6. the wedding

**A/N: Hello all! I know I've been gone for quite a long time, and this chapter is short on top of that, but I apologize. **

**This chapter backtracks to July--after Esme's engagement, but before the night before her wedding and the scene with Addie in Ch 5, then fast-forwards to the day of the wedding itself. We get to see how this engagement is affecting not just Esme, but those who matter most to her. I hope all of you are still interested in finding out what happens to Esme despite my long absense, so please read and enjoy.**

**disclaimer: twilight does not belong to me. never has, never will.**

"The three rings of marriage are the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering."  
—_Unknown_

**~0~**

**the wedding**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1917  
**__**July**_

Mother and I fought nearly every day leading up to August 15.

I did not wish to be wed in the chapel where she and my father had married all those years ago.

"Why are you being so difficult, Esme?! Can you not grant me just this _one thing_?!"

I bit my tongue to stop myself from throwing the question back in her face.

I did not wish to invite a single person to this wedding, this farce, this spectacle. Yes, by law, I would need someone, a witness, to see this travesty, this lie in the face of God, but no one else. I could no more ask someone to witness my execution.

I did not speak these words to my mother. She thought I was behaving absolutely unbearably. "We cannot _not _invite people, Esme Anne!" she shrieked. "It's simply not _done_! What would people think? What would they say?"

_Who would care? _I wanted to ask?

And I firmly refused to wear a white dress.

One morning, at breakfast, Mother told me that she had a surprise for me. From the attic, Mother had dragged her wedding gown. I recall perfectly how she made me stand, stiff and disbelieving, holding it against me beseechingly as my father nodded in approval. "Look how nice the lace looks against your skin, Esme. You'll be beautiful."

I didn't want to be beautiful. I wanted to be ugly. Horrendous. If only to reflect how badly I did not wish this marriage to occur.

I flung the dress away from me. "Don't touch me. Don't touch me with that…_thing. _Or the next time you see it, it will be little more than a heap of rags."

Mother was horrified. Father was silent, eyes bright with reproach.

I would not apologize.

Charles Evenson did not come to see me again. He made no appearance at my home at all, actually. Wisely, my sinister side thought. All business my parents had with him was done in his home on the other side of town after his first attempt for a visit and I sullenly barricaded the door to my room and would not venture downstairs until I'd heard him bid my parents goodnight.

So as my hours at home dwindled, I spent more and more time in the Murphys' kitchen.

I had not seen Brian since my engagement had been announced in town. Not that I had not tried. No matter what time I arrived at the house, Mr. or Mrs. Murphy insisted that he had just stepped out, that he was on an errand, that he was working, chopping wood, buying groceries, and any number of other excuses I didn't believe, but refused to negate. I had even crawled out of my window for a trip to town late one night, intent on figuring out why he was avoiding me. True to form, he was at the tavern, unpacking his violin from the wooden case William had made him.

Brian had stayed firm on his decision not to accept a job at the factory. But neither had he filled out a draft card.

I remember the day in June when Mrs. Murphy had advised that I sit with Adelaide for the day, because Brian would be unable to. I accepted readily, querying softly as to whether Brian was ill.

"'is spirits 'ave been broken, is all, sweet," Mrs. Murphy said with tears in her eyes.

Only later would I learn that Brian's violin, the item he loved more than anything else in the world, had been sold. The money had gone directly into the pocket of a man who forged documents--passports, social security documents, and birth certificates.

For all intents and purposes, Brian Murphy was 15 years old, not 18. He would be 15 next year, and the year after, so long as the state continued to ask for documentation and draft cards. So long as the war continued.

The tavern was nearly empty, just a few bleary-eyed old men and the bartender as Brian unearthed the fourth-hand violin with unreliable strings that he had gotten to replace the one he had lost.

"This is what war does to us," I murmured to the bartender, an older woman with a cap of cropped brown hair.

"You'd be right about that, Miss," she replied, drying a glass and setting it on the bar. "But it's him, too." She jerked at thumb at the makeshift stage, where Brian was tuning his fiddle. "Our friend Brian hasn't been playing anything but those moaning, sad songs on that fiddle of his for the longest time."

I listened more intently to the notes in the air, and suddenly understood exactly what she meant. Brian's bow moved slowly over low notes, dragged over the higher ones, and the words fell out of my mouth of their own volition: "He's crying."

"It sounds that way, doesn't it?" the bartender agreed bringing me back to earth. "Whatever it is that's bothering him, I don't know. I just know it's driven all my customers away. Excuse me." And with that she moved away from me to wipe the other end of the bar.

Tears fell down my cheek, and I had to escape the swan song coming from Brian's violin before it could suffocate me. I hopped off the bar stool, and felt more than saw Brian's heart breaking as I left the tavern.

Addie was bewildered. She didn't understand how on earth I was getting married, and I didn't want her to. Whenever she brought up Charles, I would divert her attention with talk of the baby or Will, who had taken more and more shifts at the factory so that I hardly ever saw him anymore. It was most certainly a distraction for her, but it was more for myself than anything; so long as I could remember _why _I was doing this, I could keep sane.

Keep a straight face, smile and laugh in the right places, change the subject if necessary, pretend I was fully involved in my life at this point, and not just a passive observer.

And in the end, it was Mrs. Murphy who, as my wedding date approached, took it upon herself to create my wedding dress.

One afternoon, I shut the door at my back, wrinkling my nose at how…putrid the kitchen smelled. "Mrs. Murphy?" I called out uncertainly.

"Oh!" I heard a door shutting quickly, before Mrs. Murphy moved into the kitchen, drying wet palms on her apron. "Esme, sweet, I didn't expect you so early!"

The flushed cheeks and nervous eyes gave away her guilt just as they did in Addie's face. I merely held her gaze with a half-smile until she was biting her lips and bouncing, and she finally burst out, "I know you'd been sayin' you didn't want a weddin' dress, Esme, and I know there're things you can't be tellin' anyone and you've got your reasons and know that you feel you have to do this, and you don' want to, and your mama was here last week, begging me to reason with you and I couldn't bring myself to be doin' it--if you won't wear white, that's your choice. But I thought you might like something different?"

When I just blinked at her, she took my limp hand, and pulled me to the backyard, where a dull gray dress--one of my dresses, I noted idly--was hanging on the clothesline.

"'Twas one of yours, a white one. I mixed it with some dye in the kitchen last night, but if you don' like it--"

It was gray. A dark gray. The closest I could get to black.

"I love it," I cut her off. Tears clogged my throat. "If you'll--" I coughed hastily. "If you'll excuse me, Mrs. Murphy. I forgot something I had to do."

I spent those 2 months running, hiding from a day in August that changed everything.

_**August 15**_

I remember close to nothing of the ceremony.

Only that unlike all those months he hardly acknowledged me to my maddening frustration, Charles kept his unsettling colorless eyes on me.

And that that I was hardly able to speak the words intoned by the Judge, foregoing "I do" entirely for a jerky nod that had Charles's eyes flashing.

And afterwards Brian standing abruptly, snatching off his best tie and shoving his way past Will like he couldn't stand to be in the room any longer.

I waited, I prayed, I chanted internally, hoping that at the last possible moment that someone--_anyone_--would burst through the doors of the church, giving an inexplicable reason that Charles and I could not possibly be married.

Anyone? No. Not anyone. One person. The one person I could not stop my mind from obsessing over, no matter what I did. Even now.

Then Charles was lifting my veil, the thin curtain of security, and I forced myself to remain perfectly still. But I turned my face, squeezing my eyes shut as his mouth bumped against my cheek.

I could not meet Addie's clearly accusatory gaze. Will's bemused glance. The emptiness of Brian's seat. My parents' smugly satisfied half-smiles. Charles' probing stare. They whirled around me in a carousel of mixed emotions and expressions.

"May I now present Mr. And Mrs. Charles Evenson!"

And then I was married and finished all in the same sentence.


	7. the thirteenth day

**A/N: Hey! Speedy update, right? AND a long chapter—I'm just on a roll!**

**A quick note about this chapter: this story is rated T. This chapter is definitely straddling the line between T and M. Plainly, it contains sex. Nonconsensual sex. I did my very best to keep it vague enough so that it's closer to T than it is to M, but if it doesn't seem that way to you, please, shoot me a PM or leave a review. I just didn't want to change the rating if I'm just being paranoid for nothing.**

**But keep in mind, what happens to Esme in her life is far from PG-13. Mine is but an artistic interpretation of what that was like, but I'm trying to be as accurate as possible.**

**Reviews are much loved, and I'm going back to my old treatise: If you review, I'll reply with a sneak peek of the next chapter. :)**

**Anyway, enough of my gabbing. I'll let you guys get to reading. Enjoy!**

* * *

**disclaimer: i may have wished for it for christmas, but twilight _still _doesn't belong to me.**

"…Life was not easy, nor was it happy, but she did not expect life to be easy, and if it was not happy, that was a woman's lot. It was a man's world… The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took credit for the management and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him. Men were rough of speech and often drunk. Women ignored the lapses of speech and put the drunkards to bed without bitter words. Men were rude and outspoken, women were always kind, gracious, and forgiving."

—_p. 61, __Gone With The Wind__ by Margaret Mitchell _

**~0~**

**the thirteenth day**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1917  
**__**August**_

It is not something easily forgotten. There is many a thing my mind loses, no matter how desperately I would cling to it, and much too many a thing that is imprinted on me for all eternity.

I remember it exactly. It was the twenty-eighth day of August, 1917. I had been married for 13 days.

"Where have you been?"

Reader, I will tell you now, plainly, truthfully, in no mixed words that I was frightened at that moment for the first time in my life. It was the worst kind of fear, really, when you have no earthly idea what to be frightened of. All I was sure of was that my heart beat thickly in my ear, the rapid _thud-thud _encompassing all thought.

And yet I couldn't understand. Why was I reacting this way? Charles' countenance was answer enough.

Confused, I waved vaguely at the door. It had shut automatically at my back from the wind — although now, irrationally, I willed it with my mind to open again. "Addie needed help with the nursery," I said in a voice so unlike my own I hardly recognized it.

Charles's stare was unwavering and something in it made sweat bead through the high neck of my bodice.

He stood from the armchair and stalked over to me. There was no other word for the predatory way he moved. Adrenaline had my nerve-endings on fire and I can honestly tell you that I didn't know why. He drew ever closer, murmuring darkly, "It is late."

My hands fidgeted anxiously. "Yes, A-Addie requested my advice." Slippery snakes of perspiration slithered down my back. Fighting to distract him, I added, "The doctor believes it will be a boy."

"Esme." His fingers smoothed over my face and I was reminded of how awful it felt inside to be touched by him. But my conscience chastised me harshly for admitting such a thing, even to myself. I was Charles' wife; if nothing else, that was how I was seen by society. In the privacy of their own homes, husbands and wives … touched one another. His breath whooshed out over my nose.

Alcohol.

Men drank. My father drank, even. A glass of wine once a week on our farm was all he could afford. But this was not the sweet grape wine that had been offered to me to sip the year I turned 16. Instinctively, I knew. The putrid stench made me wish to draw back, but even in the flickering candlelight, I could see Charles's eyes swimming with the source of his intoxication.

"Charles, I-I should go fix supper."

"No," the pads of his washed-out forefingers were still stroking roughly. "Supper should have been fixed before."

"I—"

I had no time to see him draw back his hand, no moment to anticipate it. The blow came swiftly, felling me instantly and jarring my shoulder on the floor in one fell swoop.

I saw Charles's eyes widen like he couldn't quite believe what he had just done. He remained there, hand aloft, frozen, and an unseemly gray, looking the definition of a statue. I grasped my cheek, panting heavily and fighting back a sob.

"Stop crying!" he bellowed. It was the first time he had ever raised his voice, but I would only remember that detail later.

I nodded, dazed, though it did little to stop the tears. Charles stomped nearer, crouching beside me to cover my mouth with his hand, pressing into the tender skin of my face. Then his voice was so calm again, I had to question whether I had imagined the whole thing.

"Esme, do I ask that you go work in a factory like these other women?" I didn't respond. I could do nothing but wheeze in tiny gulps of air as my heart thudded madly in my breast.

The monster had returned. Eyes feral, he shook me, hard. "Answer me!"

I squeaked in the negative, moving my head quickly from side to side with as much room as he allowed me.

"No." Calm once more. "I only ask that supper be ready when I get home. I work all day so you can stay home doing nothing but gossiping with your silly friends." His tone had decreased in pitch, but I wasn't at all assured that the storm had passed.

If anything, I was even more afraid.

Suddenly, he dropped his hand and the pain sprung back into my face tenfold. "Don't forget again."

I do not recall how long I lay on the floor, gasping in shock and pain. There was a sound of a door slamming — our door? — and music floated up from out in town, so out of place with its cheerful melody. Each time I attempted to stand, my weak limbs failed me and I slipped to the floor, jerking my body again and again. Eventually, I mustered the strength, moving gingerly to the stove.

There I stood. Pouring, scooping, tasting, and stirring like an automaton. I could not taste, could not see, could not hear. And I could not close my eyes for fear of reliving that moment.

No one had ever raised their hand to me. Precocious as I had been as a child, my parents had never spanked or switched me, though on more than one occasion I was sorely deserving of it.

The door opened and closed quietly. Charles set his hat and coat by the fire, like always, and sat at the table, frowning at his folded hands. He ate his dinner silently, and the only sounds in the house were those of the fire crackling and his spoon clinking over and over again against the china. Finally, he stood and strode into the room where we slept.

I know now that what I felt running through me was nothing short of shock. My whole body trembled at the thought that I would be sleeping in the same room, in the same _bed_, with him. I put off going for as long as possible. I scrubbed the dishes so meticulously that I could see my dull outline in them. Lifting up a spoon, part of the set my parents had given me as a wedding gift, I could see the faint purple starting sluggishly in small increments from my temple all the way to my chin.

It was shaped like a hand.

I immediately wished I had not looked.

I dallied in the bathroom adjoining the room, grateful beyond belief to hear Charles's loud snores emanating from beneath the quilt.

It's curious, how very determined I was to forget what had happened. Gingerly, I lifted myself into the bed, instinctively placing myself as far away from Charles as possible on the narrow mattress. Already I was convincing myself that the instance had never occurred. _If I can just pretend, _I though fighting sleep.

It was an accident, I reasoned. And determinedly, I set my mind at resolving how to best keep my husband happy. I wanted to be a good wife. If that was the one real thing I had, I wanted to be a good wife.

I shut my eyes and let sleep take me.

~0~

It was dark when I awoke to fingers roughly pushing my nightdress away. I was conscious enough to peek at the window, wondering what time of night it was. Groggy with sleep, I batted them away. They clung harder and I felt the material give. A nightmare, but what sort of nightmare was this? Insurmountable fright welled up in my me; my mind was working quickly to discover what sort of animal had ensnared me in the middle of the night in my own bed. I struggled against the hold, wrenching my arms out of the steely grasp.

I was jolted fully out of sleep when the hands rapped my head sharply against the headboard. My vision swam, but I could make out the outline of my husband propping himself up on an elbow while he held my wrists securely in the other hand.

"Be still," Charles ground out. The faint light of the moon was just enough for me to see the frustration written plainly on his face. He fought with the tie of his trousers and I realized idly that he had taken to bed fully dressed. He was panting in my ear, coating it in the foul mist of his breath.

Why did I so wish to fight? The morbidly embarrassing talk with my mother before my wedding should have prepared me for this. _Close your eyes and it will all be over soon enough. Sometimes … it is even almost pleasurable, _she had said turning red at her own frankness.

This was a wife's duty. My mother had not been required to say it because I had understood. And a part of me had been almost excited. The look of sheer wonderment on Addie's face as she continued to expand with their child had been enough for me to be willing. A child would be worth the mortification, the shame I had coached myself against but had felt nonetheless. A child would be worth it.

His hands gripped my breasts so tightly that I was not given any choice but to cry out. They kneaded them painfully and shocked tears jumped into my eyes. I saw the purple dots beginning to form on my skin and gasped out, "Charles, wait … please …"

Charles removed his face from the pillow beside my own, glaring down at me. His eyes were tinged with red, watery and unfocused. Even as I entreated him plaintively, I knew somehow that he was not seeing _me_. His greedy gaze raked over my exposed body; out of the corner of my eye I saw my tattered nightgown and wished that mere thought was enough to have it covering me again.

And then a red haze obscured my vision. My mouth was open, I knew, but no sound escaped it.

Believe me, reader, when I say that pain is another world. And in that world, there are colors that are so violently brilliant that it hurts to even look at them. My eyes snapped shut of their own volition and I was flung headlong into that world of agonizing hues. The greens and violets and blood-reds were all I could see as Charles grunted rhythmically.

If I had only a _second_, just one moment without his weight compressing me into the mattress, to allow some pure oxygen to float to my brain and remind it that this was how children were made. But I could not breathe, could not think at all. Time weakened my resolve to escape, until I just lay there.

"Ugh," he groaned as tears rolled unheeded down my bruised skin and into my hair. The urge to wretch was nearly too much to suppress.

He collapsed on top of me, spent and heavy. My lungs screeched in protest, but all the fight had drained from me and I was only able to press at his chest half-heartedly.

When he rolled away to continue snoring unconcernedly, I ran from the room.

_Where can I go? _I thought in a panic? _Anywhere but here_, my brain answered for me. I settled for the bathroom, where Charles had yet to fix the shower's faucet. Naked, uncaring, and feeling broken, I sank into the tub and turned on the lukewarm spray, letting the shower's weak drizzle rain over me. And there I stayed until the morning, long after the water had run cold.

**~0~**

"I think," I announced placing my hands on my hips and surveying the room, "we have every scrap of blue fabric in the Northeast in this room."

Addie laughed delightedly and waddled to stand closer to me. "It's a shame it'll be if this babe isn't a boy," she said rubbing her hand almost unconsciously over her stomach. Her next words were so quiet, it was difficult to know whether it was to me she spoke, or to the mound cradled beneath her palm. "William wants a boy so badly. I'm so hopin' our firstborn is a boy."

My teeth clamped tightly together.

"_Here," Addie demanded. I arrived at her house that morning and she immediately pressed my hand firmly to the swell of her belly. Something thudded dully against my hand. I knew the logistics of pregnancy. Or what I had managed to glean from my mother those scant days before my wedding. But I was unprepared for the astonishment of _feeling _the baby from the outside like this. "Feel that? Feel 'im kickin'?"_

_Through the lump in my throat I managed to laugh gustily. "Oh, yes. And your mother may just get her wish of you having a child as wild as you were."_

_Addie didn't see through my mask. She scowled good-naturedly. "Wild? There's a load of tosh." But her eyes sparkled with familiar mischief, making us both giggle._

"_Sometimes," she murmured, more to the mound that to me, "I play with 'im. Like this." Then she dragged my palm to another side of her stomach, holding it there until there was another _thump. _And again to another spot, until the baby found me there as well._

_She was so happy. And long after we had finished teasing the baby, Addie kept her hand on her stomach. "I just have to keep on makin' sure that it's really there," she had told me once._

Thou shalt not covet, Esme Anne.

Even so, I felt something horrid and mean rise up in me at the sight of my best and truest friend holding at her fingertips the very thing that I wanted the most.

But I had much time. Today was only the two-week anniversary of my marriage. I had all the time in the world to achieve my goal.

My thoughts trailed back to that specific act and then delved further into last night. As the very notion made me short of breath, my mind skipped ahead to this morning, when Charles had allowed me to fix his tie before he left the house, saying quietly, "I will see you tonight." His eyes had conveyed what his words would not, and I had made it my explicit desire to return home long before six o'clock.

Still, my looking glass revealed what the spoon had been unable to, and disguising what had occurred last night had been difficult. We were not having problems, I reasoned. I had simply not thought, and in not thinking I had upset the man who now took care of me. It had been the first night I had failed as a wife, and it would be the last. I swore it, and I would not break the pact with myself by airing our laundry.

The purple had faded to yellow and I had said a quick prayer in thanks that the skin had not been broken. I still owned the bit of face paint that my mother used to mask the tired lines beneath her eyes from rising every morning on a farm schedule, and if I held my face just so, the bruise was hardly detectable.

"Adelaide?" William's voice came from below us, followed by the click of the front door.

Addie's face became panicked and she scurried (quickly, I might add, despite her size) to the whitewashed rocking chair that sat in the corner of the room. "Esme, if he asks, I've been sittin' all morning and I even put my feet in some warm water."

I wasn't given a chance for response before Will's footsteps were on the stairs and Addie was rocking placidly back and forth with her eyes closed. He entered the room, smiling at me in greeting, and then immediately seeking out his wife.

Ever the dramatic, Addie made a big show of "awakening," blinking sleepily at Will as he bent to kiss her forehead. Her eyes found mine, gleaming with a certain desperation that had me fighting back a smile. "Dear me, Esme!" she exclaimed. "Did you stay here all this time I was asleep?"

Will gave her an indulgent glance that spoke volumes. "You're worse than a child at bedtime, Adelaide Dempsey. I know very well you haven't had your nap yet."

"My nap! Of all the—"

"Remember what the doctor said?"

"Aye, I do, but—"

"And how these last weeks are very important for the baby's health? And how resting will put you in a better mood?"

Hot indignation flooded Addie's face. "Just what are ye tryin' ta say about my mood, William?"

Will paled. "I— No! Nothing! I wasn't saying anything! _I _didn't say anything! This is the doctor speaking, Adelaide, and I only meant—"

"What you meant was that I've turned into a grouchy old sow, isn't it?"

There was calculated emotion in Addie's voice, planned tears and sniffling. For the past week, she'd been baiting Will with these shows of excessive sensitivity. When I'd finished laughing long enough to ask why, she'd claimed that if she cried enough, he'd lie down with her and rub her back. And when I'd pointed out that William Dempsey was putty in her palm, and he'd leap off the roof if she only asked him, she'd replied that she felt guilty ordering him around, but if he _volunteered _to do it… Well, then, that was a horse of a different color.

The naked panic in Will's face had me biting my lip to remain quiet. "Adelaide, _of course not! _You're beautiful!"

Addie stood from the rocker with difficulty. "I'm goin' ta lie down," she grumbled huffily. "I'm sorry, Esme." She nodded in my direction and when she had waddled far enough for her face to be out of Will's line of sight, threw me a wink and a grin.

Will and I watched her slowly round the corner to their bedroom. He raked his fingers through his hair roughly.

"Woman drives me up the wall," he muttered.

I smiled. "You love it. You love her."

"Aye." I smiled bigger at his use of what we called an 'Addie-ism.' "I don't mean to throw you out, Esme, but…" He angled his head toward the direction of their bedroom.

I laughed. "Go."

He embraced me quickly, and I granted myself the indulgence of resting my head on his shoulder briefly. When I thought about it this way, when I could easily see the happiness my acceptance of Charles had granted, it wasn't difficult to get through the day at all.

I pulled back and realized with dull shock that there was a smudge of pale face paint of William's work shirt.

His arms tightened on my shoulders.

"Esme," he said slowly, softly. "What happened to your cheek?"

Temptation seized me in that moment. Temptation to tell William, my oldest friend, everything. Absolutely everything. The blackmail, the engagement, the wedding, last night. There was an unworldly pressure in my chest. I had to tell _someone_, or it was going to eat me alive.

My mind knew that. But, as was beginning to happen more and more often, my heart was not in accordance.

I summoned up my best sheepish smile. "Goodness, this is embarrassing. I was scrubbing the floors last night, and I stood up before they were dry and slipped and knocked my chin on the bucket." I forced a wry laugh for effect, shutting my eyes so as not to see the skepticism on Will's face.

He was silent for a long, excruciating beat, before his hesitant laughter joined my own. "Clumsy as ever, I see."

"Even time can't work miracles, Will," I teased.

His smile slipped a bit. "You'll think I'm crazy. I thought—"

Oh, I knew what he thought. "Thought what?" I kept my eyes wide and as innocent as I could manage.

His brown eyes searched my own, before they snapped away. "Nothing. I was just being silly."

"It's the stress from the baby," I explained. _Lies, lies, lies. _"Speaking of which, I do believe your wife needs you."

Realization dawned in his face. "Shoot. Addie." He ran halfway to the door, and dashed back for a peck on the check and a hasty farewell. Then he zipped around the corner to rub Addie's back as apology for a crime he never committed.

**~0~**

My new home was at least six miles from my old one.

I could always cut that distance in half by merely short-cutting through town, and I did so, but very rarely. The factory—gray and imposing, chimneys puffing out smoke in a constant stream—was definitively unavoidable, and I tended to avoid any and all reminders of my husband whenever humanly possible.

The tavern was also in town. And I didn't trust myself to stay away. Brian was most certainly avoiding me. Avoiding nearly everyone except for Will. And since he couldn't seem to stand my presence, I had decided to respect his wishes and keep my distance.

Charles had a buggy, one that was nicer than the one my parents owned, but I knew instinctively that I wasn't to use it. Charles himself only did so whenever we climbed in it once a week to ride the six miles to my parents' home, where we'd have dinner and he'd talk enough so that I didn't have to. Then we'd ride home, and dress for bed.

So I walked the six miles.

Everyday, or close to that, anyway.

Not because I had to. No, no, I _did _have to. For my own sanity.

Reader, you must understand that honeymoons were not the rule then. They were the exception. Most husbands and wives were married one day, and back to working and carving out a living the next. In my case, I was married, and that very same day, I was relocated to this virtual solitude across town.

I used the time I walked everyday to reflect on how best to make this life that had been chosen for me the best it could possibly be. Plainly, I used this time to conjure up delusions.

I reminded myself of the numerous women who had it much worse than I. Charles frightened me, yes, but he had only ever hit me once. Just once. It was an accident. He had been drinking, he had been angry about something that had happened at work that day.

He was my husband. He was my husband. My husband.

It was just once.

_Just once._

But the walk back home was always the hardest.

Because no matter how I painted a picture of a happy homestead and a loving husband awaiting my return, my body knew better.

Each step towards Charles's house was a battle. A battle against every self-preservation instinct within me.

Once I even sat in the grass of a pasture full of Mr. McReedy's flock, idling there as the sheep easily grazed around me as if I wasn't there at all. How long I remained there, just constantly running through the list of reasons I could not leave written on a worn scrap of paper that I always kept tucked in my brazier for such occasions, I cannot say. I do know that I had to run the remaining three miles at a full sprint to be home before Charles.

But everyday like clockwork, I made the journey back. One foot in front of the other, my bootprints settling in the dust and blowing away in the fall wind.

**~0~**

_**September**_

The second time is just as memorable as the first. Perhaps more so, because I had almost completely convinced myself that it couldn't possibly happen again.

I was wrong.

"Esme."

"In the dining room, Charles," I called, my hands shaking at the effort it took to keep my voice steady.

I could hear him hanging his coat and his hat next to the fire. "Is that stew I smell?"

"Lamb stew," I clarified, setting down the plates. One at the head of the table, and a smaller one at the chair beside it.

He entered the dining room, and I was once again struck by how all the color in the walls, in the table, the chairs, the china, the silverware, got infinitesimally duller. The pallor of his skin sucked life from all he touched. I averted my eyes from his frame and continued meticulously placing the spoons and forks.

"Good. My favorite."

He walked toward me until he was standing behind me, not unlike the day he'd gotten me to agree to the very thing that put me in this situation all over again. I dropped my eyes, not even daring to breathe. Not that I would've been able to, had I wished to, once I saw the long brown sleeves of his work shirt move so that he was grasping the back of the chair, effectively trapping me between his body and the table.

"That dress is very becoming on you, Esme," Charles murmured very close to my neck. "Have I told you that?"

Bile rose up my throat in disgust. The dress I wore today was more older and form-fitting than any of my other ones. And despite the fact that Charles had seen my body without a stitch of clothing on it, mortified color rushed into my cheeks.

My entire body was trembling. "I—You—" I choked, biting my tongue rather painfully, then gasping as Charles raised a bunch of my hair to his nose and inhaling deeply.

"Did you miss me, Esme?"

He was like this from time to time.

I had discovered on our wedding night that despite every indication I had given to the contrary, there were times that Charles seemed to forget that this entire scenario was not of my own choice.

"_Do you like the house?"_

_I shrugged noncommittally, staring blankly at the wooden floors._

"_I've lived here for a little over a five months. It was a property that was in my family for some time. The former residents were three months behind on their rental payments. It was…unacceptable."_

_He continued speaking, but my mind stuck on a fact. I recalled that story, vaguely. The Smiths had lived in this house, and had two boys fighting in the Great War. One of them, Howard, had been killed in Germany, and his parents had pooled every cent they had to bring his body home. They had been tremendously in debt when the collectors took their scant possessions and dumped them on the lawn._

_And now I knew that it had been Charles's doing._

_Something touched my hand, and I all but jumped out of my skin. Charles stood there, his hand in close proximity to mine, retreating slowly. I looked up in his face at that moment as saw something akin to frustration before the lifeless eyes returned to their norm._

My hands shook so hard, the silverware bounced rapidly against the table. "Charles," I managed to stutter. "The food is growing cold."

He took a deliberate step back from me. I am only too glad that he could not see my face, for I am sure that the relief that coursed through me was all too evident in my expression. "It is."

I forced myself to walk, not run, into the kitchen for the stew pot. I served, and we ate without incident for a few moments, until Charles muttered something.

When he was quiet once more, against my better judgment, I questioned, "Pardon?"

"The meat is burnt."

There were alarms ringing in my head. I could hardly keep my hand still enough to spoon a bit of stew into my mouth experimentally. "I don't believe it is." How would I know? My fear had rendered every taste bud on my tongue useless; all I tasted was ash.

"The meat is _burnt, _damn you!" Charles punctuated the last portion of his statement by slamming down his spoon hard enough that every dish on the table jumped.

My brain had no control over the words spilling out of my mouth. "I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't realize—I was distracted, thinking of Addie and Will and—" Furious cobalt eyes swung to me. "I _should _have realized, but I didn't. I'm sorry. I just— It was stupid of me. I—"

I didn't finish my sentence.

In a movement so fast it dizzied me, he had swept all the china from the table. They landed noisily, the hot soup splashing onto my bare legs and making me flinch. And suddenly Charles was beside me, wrenching me up from my chair by my wrists and jerking me to him, so I could feel every furious breath he took.

"Here's what you've neglected to grasp since we were wed, Esme." I closed my eyes at the feeling of spittle landing on my cheeks. "_Look at me_!" he snarled, shaking me so hard my head bobbled helplessly.

I couldn't help but look at him. My eyes had snapped open, wide as dinner plates, and refused to close.

"You belong to me. Everything you think you own, it belongs to me. The clothes you wear, the food you eat—it is mine. You see your idiotic friends every day because I permit you to do so. You piddle around the house doing nothing because I let you. You wake up every morning because I allow it."

His nails were pressing insistently on the veins in my wrist. I could feel nothing but faint tingling from the wrist down, and I knew I was losing circulation in my hands.

"Don't make me hurt you, Esme." Charles shook his head regretfully, taking in a shuddering breath as if he was truly sorry to be doing this to me. "You could have a good life, if you would only do as you're told."

The shaking of my head was automatic, my body's expression of disbelief at how this had happened to me.

Charles tilted his head, mouth pulling downward at the corners like a pouting child. "Why must you be so _difficult_?"

It was a question I had heard all my life growing up in the house that I did. I had never once in all my twenty-one years found a response that satisfied those who demanded it of me. Not that I had the chance to stammer out a reply.

In an instant, I was slammed against the wall behind us, stars exploding behind my eyes.

"Please," I begged to nothing and no one.

The hard smack snapped my head to the right.

A hand yanked my face back, and when I regained focus, Charles was wagging a finger at my nose, teeth clenched and the tendons in his neck standing at attention. "Be very quiet. Be _very _quiet."

I could see my wide-eyed, tear streaked face reflected back at me in his eyes.

"This is punishment, Esme. It's simple: when you do something wrong, you are punished. That seems fair, doesn't it?"

I said nothing.

"Nod your head like a good girl, Esme."

There was no thought necessary. I nodded.

"And you deserve to be punished, don't you?"

When I didn't respond, his face turned monstrous, and automatically, my head bobbed frantically.

"And I have the right to punish you, don't I?"

I nodded.

"Good. I'm glad we've reached this understanding. This is the way things are going to be, Esme. This is what you've forced me to do."

Charles pushed me against the wall once more, and stepped back, watching as I slid to the floor in a heap. I could see his eyes taking in the mess he had made—both the bowls, and me.

"Clean this up," he muttered.

And with that, he turned on his heel and walked calmly from the room. Dimly, before I lost consciousness, I heard the front door slamming.

**~0~**

He took me again that night. Groping, fumbling and blundering in the darkness.

It was the same the next night.

And the night after that.

And the night after that.

He would finish, roll over, and after a minute, begin snoring as though nothing in the world could disturb him. I would climb out of bed and sit in the bathtub, thankful for the cool porcelain underneath my naked bottom, if only for the fact that it was the exactly opposite of the overheated flesh I lay next to each night.

Life continued in much the same way.

Charles would come home to find that I had done or had not done something worthy of punishment. And I was punished. Harshly, with no respite.

There were periods of time I went for days on end without being punishment. And just when I thought I had figured out the secret pattern to this life, the loophole to this punishment contract, he would start in on me, listing all the wrongs of the prior days, some of which I was absolutely certain I had not committed. It would go on, and on, and on…

…Sometimes it continued for hours...

But always, _always_ I was expected to lie beside him and let him violate my body for his own purposes.

My skin's natural hue became that off-purple tinged with yellow.

I became accustomed to limping the six miles to the Dempsey home. Or, if it had been a particularly bad night and no amount of face paint or the long-sleeved dresses I had taken to wearing could disguise what had transpired, I simply did not go at all.

I became nearly silent. I spoke less and less around Charles. I let him push his lips against mine as he seemed to like more and more often these days.

And I stopped counting the number of times he beat me. Because, really, the remembrance was more painful than the event itself.


	8. the stranger

**A/N: Hello, again! I actually meant to post this Saturday, but my computer was being funky.**

**First I want to take the time to apologize to anyone I may have offended before I changed the rating on this story. It does contain mature themes, and me trying to dilute them doesn't change that.**

**Second, HAPPY NEW YEAR! **

**And third, I very much enjoy reviews, and reward them with sneak-peeks of the next chapter!**

_**C'est tout! **_**Read and enjoy.**

**disclaimer: mine! wait, sorry, did you say Twilight_? _oh _THAT? _damn. nah, that's not mine.**

* * *

"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, and somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken."  
—_Fyodor Dostoyevsky_

**~0~**

**the stranger**

_**Columbus, Ohio; 1917  
**__**September**_

I was married for a month when the pattern began to deviate.

I suppose a "normal" wife would not have noticed it. But it hadn't taken me long at all to realize that I was far from a normal wife. The parade of faces throughout town were not like my own. There were war widows, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, cousins, aunts—all of their faces bore that downtrodden sadness countered by the steel in their expressions and the fierce pride for the boys they had sent to war, boys who returned home in caskets.

If they returned at all.

We were all doing our part—that's what they called it, "doing our part"—to help our boys. And regardless of their age, or the fact that we knew only the tiniest percentage of them personally, that's what we called them: "our boys."

The Sunday dinners with my parents became longer and longer. Mother and I would sit at a loom from a past generation, winding fibers and feeding them through to make blankets. Within three hours, we could make 20 blankets that she would deliver to the town hall every week. The stitching was shoddy, the material lumpy and coarse, but as we were told, every effort helped.

The thought never crossed my mind that perhaps these blankets would help no one, that perhaps they'd fall into the Germans' hands and all our work would have been for naught, that this was really a distraction for the young women in Columbus who could be found roaming the town, quiet and blank, waiting for their sweethearts to come home.

Mostly because I did very little independent thinking anymore.

I didn't have that quiet dignity that I could wrap around me like a cloak, the knowledge that my men folk were off fighting to keep me warm and safe. And that patriotic light didn't shine in my eyes when people spoke of the bravery of our boys and how wonderful they all were.

I hated this war. I hated every reason it had started, I hated every reason it hadn't finished and just kept growing and growing. It was nothing less than monstrous, and I had to gird my opinions, sealing my lips whenever the subject came up in conversation, which was often.

As I said, I was not a normal wife.

Which is why one day, when Charles arrived home half an hour later from work than he normally did, I noticed.

Nothing else was different. He still pulled me by the hair and forced my passive mouth against his. He still found something about which to become furious with me, this time the fact that our meal wasn't hot enough. I was past the point of mentioning that it had only cooled because he'd been late. I took the blows, felt the familiar sting of tears and the dull ache of pain that couldn't be pinpointed to any specific place. He still pushed himself atop me and did as he pleased, still rolled off with a grunt, still slept, still snored.

And as I lay my head on my crossed arms in the bathtub that night, my mind stuck on that one fact.

Charles had been late.

The next morning, I said nothing, dutifully scooping up Charles' breakfast things as he went out the door with a brief, "See you tonight."

But that night, I waited. I watched the tiny timepiece pin that Addie had given me for my birthday last year with hawk-eyes. And when Charles arrived precisely when he always did, I doubted my own sanity.

I waited for that tiny discrepancy in the routine for weeks, but it didn't happen again.

And time went on.

The beatings continued.

And after a while, I forgot all about that half-hour.

**~0~**

_**November**_

"William Dempsey, that better not be you creepin' into the nursery like a thief in the night."

Will, who had been doing just exactly that, straightened and brushed at his clothes in an effort at casualness. "No, dear, I was just…checking the hinge on the bathroom door. It's been squeaking a bit as of late."

Addie didn't bother keeping the smile out of her voice. "Alrigh'. Just checkin'."

I had to chew on my own tongue as Addie and I turned back to our conversation and I could see Will slink past the Dempseys' bedroom door dejectedly. A single glance at Addie's face had me giggling helplessly, falling back on the bed with mirthful delight.

From the kitchen, I heard Will turn on the water and the soft hush of it falling into a glass.

In the next instant, a sharp cry punctured the air, and next the sound of tinkling glass as Will all but threw his cup into the sink, past the doorway faster than I'd ever seen him move. When he returned to their bedroom moments later, he was bouncing a bundle of blue blankets, shushing and making soothing noises at it.

Addie and I grinned at one another.

William Dempsey had fallen in love. Again.

Nolan Dempsey was less than a month old, and already had his father right where he wanted him.

"Can ye believe this one, Esme?" Addie laughed, gesturing at Will. "He'd be sleepin' in the nursery if I'd let him, he would. I can' get him to let poor Nolan be for more'n a minute at a time 'fore he's back in there carryin' 'im and rockin' 'im."

"He loves it," Will said, not bothering to deny this obviously true statement. He joined us on the bed, squeezing between us so we could all coo and tickle Nolan to our hearts' content. And when he finally began wailing, mouth wide open showing soft, toothless gums, Addie smiled. "I know what that means."

Will passed him over to her easily, leaning across her for privacy as Addie tugged down her nightgown. When Nolan had latched on, Will made a few movements and leaned out of my line of sight. I could see Nolan's blanket now draped over them both as he fed.

"Aye," Addie murmured almost unconsciously. "There's a lad."

Nolan's arm thrashed out restlessly, and caught hold of Will's index finger, making my best friend's face light up from within.

I watched this scene, crippled, barely breathing as my heart pounded miserably.

_Why wasn't this mine?_

Nolan Gair Dempsey had been born at 1:38 p.m. on October 3rd, 1917.

At just past noon, frantic pounding on the door had scared the wits out of me, and trembling at the thought that it was my husband, I steeled myself and opened the door.

"_Esme!" _

_It was a man, breathless, flushed, and sweating, standing on the front steps. _

"_William?" I laughed with relief._

"_You must—Just a moment," he panted, holding a up a single finger. I covered my mouth with my hands to stifle the giggles as he doubled over, hands on his knees, sucking in oxygen as if he'd been underwater for ten minutes._

"_What on Earth? Will—"_

"_I'm sorry. It's just—I ran all the way here and I—" He gasped. "Might I trouble you for a glass of water?"_

_I scurried inside and procured one for him, grinning broadly as he gulped it down, until his words registered._

"_I'm sorry. Will, did you just say you _ran _here?"_

_He nodded breathlessly._

"_You ran six miles? Just now? Why?"_

_That seemed to jar him back to reality. He spluttered out the water, pushed the glass back in my hands, and wiped him mouth messily on the back of his arm._

_I stared._

"_Good Lord! We have to go! We have to go _now!"

"_Go where?" I was asking, even as he was tugging me down the steps. When I wouldn't walk quickly enough for his liking, he heaved an anxious sigh and lifted me over his shoulder as if I were a sack of potatoes._

"_William!"_

"_You were taking too long!"_

_I kicked my legs futilely. "Put me down this instant!" He said nothing and trudged forward at a soldier's pace. I flailed harder. "You bleeding blockhead!" I shouted reverting to the insult I had heard Addie use on him more than once in our youth. "Where are we going?"_

"_Addie's having the baby!"_

_I froze, mid-flail._

"_Put me down. Put me down, put me down, put me down!"_

_He did so. And as soon as I was rightside-up once again, staring into his panicked face, I reached up and cuffed him soundly on the side of his head._

"_Esme!"_

_I shouted, "Your wife's having a baby and you're _here?!"

"_God, Esme, that hurt like a—"_

"_Your wife is _giving birth_ and you're here?!"_

_I raised my hand to repeat the gesture and had the satisfaction of seeing Will shrink back hastily. "She was screaming for you! She said she wasn't going to push until you got there!"_

"_So you _ran _here?!"_

"_Not the best bit of judgement on my part," he muttered sheepishly. "But she was cursing and yelling and it was just confusing the hell out of me and her and the doctor, and I just had to come get you! And now you have to come, because she said if I came back without you, she'd cut off my—"_

"_Okay!" I held up my hands. "I'm coming, I'm coming. But did you think about how we'd get there?"_

_Will's face went blank._

"_Oh. No. No, I didn't."_

_I wanted to laugh at how ridiculous this had become. But it Addie was in labor when Will left, then she would nearly be ready to push any moment. Returning home on foot wasn't an option._

_When my eyes fell on the buggy sitting beside the house, I didn't think about the possible ramifications of what I was about to do. I merely I tugged on Will's hand, pulling him toward the stable where the two horses sat chewing placidly at hay in their stalls._

_Within an hour, we were back at the Dempsey's home. _

"_I'll tend to the horses," I said, sliding off the booth._

_Will declined, telling me to go inside before Addie had a heart attack._

_And true to his word, the moment I entered, I could hear Addie's screaming._

"_Where is _ESME?!"

_I heard the doctor pleading, "You're going to have to push, Mrs. Dempsey."_

"_Don' ye be tellin' me what to do, ye lousy—"_

"_Addie!" I cried, throwing open the door to the bedroom._

"_Esme!" The word was a wail of relief._

_Addie sat propped against the headboard, cushioned against what I guessed to be every single pillow in the Dempsey household. Her hair was a fiery mess, her face beaded with sweat, her eyes wide and panicked, and a blanket draped over her bent knees. I couldn't remember seeing her look quite as scared as she did in that moment, holding her arms out beseechingly. I ran in to them without thought. _

_Will skidded into the room to sit on her other side. "Will!" she sobbed, squeezing his hand._

_Dr. Godwin looked up to nod at us curtly in thanks, before turning his attention back to his patient._

"_Now that the gang's all here, so to speak, it's time. Adelaide, push."_

_And push she did amongst the cacophony of encouraging words, curses, shouts of pain (as Addie squeezed the living daylights out of Will's right hand), and firm instructions from Dr. Godwin. Addie pushed, again, and again, and again until the cries filling the air were no longer hers, but those of her newborn son._

_I watched, as through a foggy glass all the events that followed. _

_Addie's triumphant, exhausted laughter. _

_Dr. Godwin's assessment that the baby was indeed a boy. _

_Will's excitement about cutting the umbilical cord, so much that he dropped the surgical scissors twice before he managed it. _

_Dr. Godwin wrapping the bloodstained baby in towels and handing him to a nurse I hadn't noticed before to be cleaned, and the nurse returning to place the infant in Addie's waiting arms. _

_Will standing beside her, gazing in wonder at the angry pink writhing bundle. _

_Addie murmuring a single word ("Nolan.") and Will's fervent approval of the name as he pressed an awestruck kiss to her temple. _

_His words, like an oath, a pledge of allegiance to the both of them: "I love you. God, how I love you."_

_And my own bittersweet smile, my own burning jealously formed like a knot in my breast, my own tears at the miracle, at their happiness, at my misery. _

_On the spot, it was decided that I would be baby Nolan's godmother. It certainly made sense. I loved him as if he were mine. And if I let my mind wander too far down that road, as I often did as in that moment when sleepy, full Nolan was passed to me to cuddle and hug his softness, to smell that sweet baby smell, to play with the wisps of dark red atop his head, I wished he were mine._

_Discovering both the buggy and me gone when he arrived home. Charles had thrashed me worse than he ever had before. That night I was too broken to even attempt to fix supper, and either out of mercy or disgust at my wounds, he did not force me to._

_I smiled through the sharp sting of my split lip, lying beside him in bed and deciding that it had been completely worth it._

**~0~**

After my visit with the Dempseys, I walked home to start dinner.

Daydreaming about pudgy infants, I didn't even realize that the soup was burning.

Or that it was close to 9 o'clock.

Charles was late.

He didn't arrive until 9:12, entering the house as if nothing was out of the usual. I had dinner hot and waiting for him, accepted his forceful, habitual kiss and punishment for whatever misdeed he had conjured up today as I did every night, and we went to bed. He got his fill of my body, rolled over, and fell fast asleep.

I crawled out of bed, and went to the bathtub, as always.

Running it over and over in my head a million times, I could not understand why this turn of events made me so inexplicably…_happy._

**~0~**

_**December**_

Nolan Dempsey had to be the most spoiled child in Columbus. Between his parents, Will's aunt and uncle, the Murphys, and myself, he was loved, carried, and coddled beyond any reasonable amount.

I was at the Dempsey house almost every day, my heart crying a little at the smile of recognition in Nolan's tiny face when I arrived.

Addie and Will fairly glowed with their new parenthood and I fought back my envious urges to allow myself to be happy for their happiness.

Charles's mysterious late nights had continued, much to my unexplainable delight.

And then, one night, he simply did not come home at all until the next morning.

At first, I had been at a loss. Would he expect breakfast on the table in the morning? I had risen early, prepared his eggs and sausages, watching the walkway with anxious eyes to know when to begin reheating them.

When he arrived, he offered me no explanation, no apology, no expression at all that would indicate that anything was amiss.

A few nights passed with him arriving at his normal time, and then the late nights began again.

It both confused and ridiculously pleased me.

Somewhere along the line, however, Charles had ceased to seem even remotely able to tolerate my presence. His beatings grew more and more unexplainable, unpredictable, and frequent. And even when I lay there sobbing softly—more out of habit that necessity—he didn't seem satisfied as he once had. He took out his frustrations on our furniture, our dishes, the walls, and more often than nor, left the house before returning less than two hours later, reeking of alcohol.

I'd noticed he drank more now, too. Cleaning, I'd found stashes of whiskey and gin underneath the sink where I kept the bleach. I could smell it on his clothes, his breath, surrounding him in a haze wherever he went.

The snow was falling on Ohio endlessly now, and there were times I fervently hoped that he simply wouldn't return, caught in a random, unexpected blizzard.

After my… _duties_ one Tuesday evening had finished, he had rolled away, yanking up his trousers in agitation and glancing back at me disgustedly as though I had done something awful. He had snatched his hat from its hook and slammed the door shut behind him, never speaking a single syllable to me.

When he didn't return home at all once more, I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

The next morning, I fixed his breakfast as I had before, standing vigilant as a Buckingham palace guard at the window looking for him in the sea of white. I waited until noon, then dumped his plate into the waste bin, too nervous myself to hold anything down.

So went lunch. And dinner. And breakfast the following day.

I was too frightened to leave the house until the third day of his disappearance.

I scrubbed the house from top to bottom, changed sheets I had tossed fitfully on the prior two nights—fearful of a late-night arrival from him.

On day four, I thought it safe to venture out once more. I stayed late at the Dempseys', arriving back at home and anticipating being beaten within an inch of my life.

But Charles wasn't home.

Day five dawned and the bizarre excitement within me turned to disbelief.

**~0~**

Walking the sidewalks in Columbus, I tried hard not to stare at the men I encountered. There were hardly any young men in the town anymore. Those that were there held jobs at the factory or were convalescing, their arms in slings, crutching around on wounded joints.

All of the stores were now operated by either old men, or women. A bleak cloud had settled over the town, and I found it to be drastically different from the Columbus I had known as a child. Even now, with the sun shining softly in the winter sky, with the slow melting in gutters and the streets devoid of waste, I could not call it beautiful.

Wrapping my shawl more firmly around my shoulders, I passed the theatre, the deli, the supermarket, the hobby shop, looking for a youthful face, and found none.

I had become increasingly adept at concealing what occurred behind our house's closed doors, increasingly proficient at the subtle smoke and mirrors that would distract from any traces of it. But the last few days had definitely helped, so that when the older ladies nodded at me in passing, my smile was genuine and simple.

I don't even know what I thought I would do in town—_a bit of sleuthing to discover my husband's whereabouts, perhaps? _I thought watching the chimneys of the factory belch smoke and smog into the atmosphere—or even _why _I wished to know so badly. The longer he was gone, the happier I would be.

As if struck by epiphany, I did an about-face, ready to enjoy the rest of Charles's sabbatical while I could.

I passed the whitewashed brick of the bank and was suddenly drawn to stare at the alleyway between it and the law office beside it. Despite the meager sunlight offered at 2 o'clock on a winter afternoon, the gap between the two buildings was dark, damp, and vaguely smelling of rotten cabbage. And just as I wondered what had gotten my attention about this particular alleyway in the first place, from the dark sounded another broken moan.

Curiously, not even thinking about the possible consequences, I tip-toed nearer. "Hello?" I called plaintively.

When the pained noise came again, I didn't think twice about stepping fully into the darkness. "Hello?" I asked again as my eyes adjusted. A thin layer of ice coated the ground here where the street men hadn't bothered to clear as they did every morning, and my feet skidded so that I had to catch myself against a wall. Hands braced against the brick for balance, I inched deeper into the alley, my eyes falling on a heap of brightly colored fabric.

A woman.

I took in the gaudy makeup now smeared haphazardly across her face and mixing almost undetectably with the blood from her lips and forehead, the rich material torn completely in certain areas, a stack of yellow hair covered in mud, and the choker around her neck with the smallest pink ribbon at its center.

My cheeks burned.

_Prostitute._

The morality campaigns in larger cities of the past decade had done little to cut down on the amount of gambling and drinking and prostitution within them. In the days before the war, there had been sermons about them, posters, political rallies about these "bad women" who were endangering the morality and spirituality of our men.

After my wedding night, prostitution ceased being a merely distasteful practice, but instead one of the most masochistic activities I could conjure up. I had long since stopped believing that any woman truly enjoyed sex, being groped and pulled and prodded like livestock at an auction.

And since the war had begun, prostitution had entered its heyday in the big cities that served as army hospitals for the wounded. Father Daniel called them locusts, luring in the "poor boys who had seen the horrors of war and could not think clearly enough to know better."

We heard talk of it occasionally in town. All the girls had heard the scandalous stories told by older, better traveled girls, and we could spot a tramp if ever necessary.

But until this moment, I had never seen one before.

Her plump lips, bleeding on the left side, emitted another groan. I could now see the bruising on her arms and chest (amply shown in the style of dress she was wearing despite the frigid air), her legs faintly blue, even through the sheer stockings and the heel on one shoe missing.

And my first thought was not to run screaming in the opposite direct, to alert a matron in town of just what I had seen.

My first thought was that she had to be freezing.

I slid closer and knelt beside her. At the first touch of my hand to her arm, she moaned louder than ever. I yanked it back as though I'd been burned, noticing for the first time that this arm was twisted at an odd angle, held away from the rest of her body. "Sorry, sorry. I— That must have been painful, I'm sorry."

She whimpered.

Hearing that tiny noise, I was hit with stunned recognition of the familiar cuts and bruises lining her upper body.

I murmured gravely, "A man did this to you."

At first, there was no acknowledgement of my words at all. Then a single tear slid down her rouged cheek.

I was horrified, blinking rapidly and picturing myself in the over-the-top gown with stage makeup, lying in an alleyway, broken. I thought of all the people who could see her like this, even in broad daylight, and pass her by without a single shred of pity.

I stood quickly, suddenly sure of what I had to do. She needed help. And if I didn't do it, who would?

"You— Just— Just don't go anywhere, all right? Just stay there." My mind snidely offered that there wasn't anywhere for her to go, should she even be capable of real movement. "I'll— I'll be back. I will come back for you."

I had endured beatings for much less, after all. And that thought alone justified my use of the buggy, abandoned in Charles' absence, once more. Anxious with worry about this woman, this stranger who could be any number of other horrible things on top of her profession of choice, I urged the horses faster and faster until the buggy rolled to a halt in front of the alleyway.

Any sunlight was now completely blocked by the shadow of the buggy, but inside the alley, I could hear the woman murmur fuzzily.

I skated on the melting ice toward her, kneeling alongside her in the mud.

"All right," I said carefully, my hands hovering over her body, looking for a place I could touch her with the least amount of pain. "The buggy is just there, about seven or eight feet away. I'm going to try to lift you, but you'll have to help me a little, all right?"

I sighed when she did not react at all, then saw her white teeth gripping her lip tightly and the way her bloody hands clenched so that the knuckles turned white. I took it as a sign of her being amenable to my plan, sliding one arm under her neck to wrap around a thin, pale shoulder, and the other to sling her good arm over my shoulder so that she was in a sitting position.

"On the count of three," I said, more to myself than her. "One… Two… Three!"

I began to stand, and her shocked scream was one of sheer agony. When her weight went dead against my side, I knew she had lost consciousness. And while it was probably better that way, the past few months had rendered me more or less useless, physically. It took me close to twenty minutes to drag her body back to the buggy, and another half hour to lift her onto the bed of it.

When I climbed back onto the box, my arms were shaking from exertion and I could hardly hold the reins in my hands. I was sweating something awful underneath my shawl, and drawing curious stares from the women passing on the streets. I smiled tightly and clucked at the horses until we were bumping and jostling back to the house.

~0~

This was utter stupidity.

I could hardly stand to imagine the sort of punishment Charles would inflict upon me should he come home to find what I had done.

And yet, none of this knowledge deterred me even the slightest bit as I lifted the blonde head slightly to slid a pillow beneath it.

I'd created a makeshift bed for the woman on the floor of the living room beside the fireplace, hoping to warm up both of our frozen limbs. It had taken me another hour of panting and cursing to move her from the buggy, up the steps, and inside, wading through the snow as I hefted her half steps at a time and trying to keep her from getting any more soaked than she already was.

When we finally crossed the threshold, I was ushered up a hasty prayer at the ceiling, and went on my hunt for every blanket and pillow I could find.

Now, hours later, I stabbed at the fire with the poker, glancing back at the slumbering woman, and wondering what sort of trauma had to have happened to her to put her in this situation, to put her in this occupation in the first place.

She was cocooned securely in the wool blanket from my bed, and beneath that, one of my thicker nightgowns. The basin of water beside her was a murky brown, swimming with the traces of blood, makeup and mud I had gently sponged off her face and whichever parts of her body I could reach without undressing her completely. The little mouth, pink and vulnerable, looked so young and sweet in sleep. It was a paradox, juxtaposed against the angry red of the cut on her cheek, and the scrape on her forehead amidst the myriad other bruises.

And suddenly the dark eyes were wide open, staring blankly at me. There was no surprise in the gaze, no fear or confusion or sadness. It was devoid of all emotion besides acceptance.

I turned fully, pressing a hand to her unmarred cheek to feel for a fever.

"No fever at all." I kept my voice bright and open, not wanting to frighten her with the heap of questions that lay in my mouth, ready and willing for the opportunity. "You're lucky, you know."

The unsettling stare broke as her eyelids slid down.

"No, no, no. Speak to me," I murmured, scooping up the wet cloth and touching it to the wound on her forehead. "You mustn't sleep any longer."

She winced at the touch, a good sign. "_Aidez-moi_," she whispered brokenly.

My mind connected the foreign words to the scant French I had learned from books in my youth. "_Parlez-vous l'anglais?" _At her shaky nod, I continued: "I _am_ helping you. I promise it. Keep talking," I said a bit louder when her brown eyes threatened to flutter closed once more. "Tell me anything. Your name. How old you are. What type of flower is your favorite."

"_Je m'appelle Noelle._" She gasped and broke off as I applied the disinfectant. "I 'ave eighteen years. I like ze daffodils." Noelle had to pant for a few seconds to regain the air she had used on the choppy words. "_Et vous? _What are you called?"

"Esme," I responded, dabbing the salve against her largest bruise.

"You are very kind woman, Miss Ayz-may."

"Thank you, Noelle."

"Me, I should not be 'ere. In your home."

She looked so miserable with shame. "I think I'm able enough to be the judge of that."

We were quiet for a long time, almost half an hour, before she spoke again. "Why did you do eet?"

I wrung out the bloody rag in the basin and set it aside to look into the puzzled blue eyes as I spoke. "Because you needed someone to help you. And because I needed someone to help."

"_Je ne sais pas comment vous remercier._" She laughed, and sound was far more bitter than that of any normal adolescent. "What can I even say to zat? 'ow do I give my thanks to a woman who can take in a…a girl like me? I am…I am a—"

I kept my voice soft. _"_I know, Noelle."

"You know! _Vous savez que je suis putain_, and still, you—"

"Yes."

She seemed even more confused than before. "Zen I do not understand."

I did not reply for a long time, both of us settling back into an uncomfortable silence. "Noelle, will you tell me about yourself?"

"I was born in France. My sister and I, _nous etions les jumelles_. Twins," she clarified at my puzzled look. "When I had ten years, Martine, my sister, she died."

Sympathy was swift and staggering. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

"_C'est la vie._" There was no sadness in her voice, just grim resignation. "It was long time ago."

"How did you come here? To Columbus?"

"France, she was not safe anymore. My papa died when _les Allemagnes, _ze Germans, come to France. Papa did not like ze Germans. He said zair language was disgusting. He was a soldier. My muzzer and me, we were so proud." She smiled slightly in remembrance. "His general wrote to us. He was on trip to get ze supplies, him and ze uzzer soldiers. Zey were attacked, Papa was shot in ze stomach."

The Germans had invaded France in 1914 and Britain and France, being allies, had struggled against them through 1916, and were perhaps even now fighting against them. I myself would not know. I couldn't bring myself to even look at the newspapers and the longs lists of names, names of boys I knew and ones I did not, some of them with the words "injured" beside their names, others marked "dead" or even worse, "missing; presumed dead."

"My muzzer," Noelle continued, "said we must leave right away. We could not even bury my papa. Zey could not get to his body."

Here was emotion, still raw and tender, making her eyes water and her eyes flutter quickly to bank down fresh tears.

"I was so scared to get on ze boat. So scared. Ze Germans, zey shoot everyzing in ze water. Zey did not care if we were just a poor muzzer and her girl, no. Maman died before we come to America. Ze doctors, they say she had a bad heart, but me, I know she had good heart. Is why she die, because her heart missed my papa.

"When I got off ze boat, in New York, I did not know what to do. I did not know anyone in America. My English was not very good, you see. A woman, she saw me and she told me I could live in her house. Big house. I had never seen a house so big. Zair were many girls living zair. I zot zey must be like me. And zey were. Girls from Poland and Austria and places I had only heard of but never been to. Madame Black, she gave us all clothes so beautiful and bright, and I was so grateful."

She angled her eyes up at me uncertainly. "I do not zink it would be…would be right for me to tell you the rest."

I knew the rest, I knew of the Madames who trolled the piers, just waiting to use young girls like Noelle fresh off the boat, unsure and frightened in the new world they had come to in hopes of escaping the horrors plaguing their homes. I knew of how they took the girls into their big boardinghouses converted into brothels, and how the girls had no say in the matter.

"Please, Noelle," was my reply.

"One night, I had been at ze house for a week, Madame she came in my bedroom, and she asked me if I liked it zair. And of course I did. I had hot food, and a warm bed, and zings could have been very bad for me, and zis is where I came instead. And she was pleased. And zen she told me I would have to start earning all zose zings. And I said I would cook and clean, whatever Madame wants. She laughed at me. She opened ze door and zair was a man zair. I do not even remember his face. I asked if zis was her husband, and she laughed again. She told me zat I had to take good care of him, and if I did not, he would tell Madame, and she would not let me be in ze house anymore. I did not understand. Zen Madame left, she shut ze door. And ze man… He… He…"

Noelle began to sob, openly, fully. Overcome, I pulled her head into my lap and ran my fingers through the strands over and over as I felt the material of my dress become drenched in her tears. I let her cry, let myself cry for her and for me.

I tucked the blankets around her after her sobbing quieted and I looked down to find her sleeping once more, her face blank and innocent and exhausted all at the same time.

I still had no idea how Noelle had come to Columbus, so far from New York City, but that was her story to tell me whenever she wished. I still had no idea what I would do if Charles walked in at that exact moment.

But I watched as the firelight flickered across her skin, casting dancing shadows on the marks on her face, and I cursed the people who had caused them—from the German soldiers to the Madame to the man who had put her in that alley in the first place—and feeling weak and shaky, crawled into bed myself.

**~0~**

I dreamt of him that night.

And unlike all of the other nights that I dreamt of him, visions of him growing dimmer and dimmer as time wore on, tonight he was clear as day, glorious and golden as if it were our first meeting all over again.

_We were sitting in The Spot, the sun shining through the leaves in patches, both of us facing the big tree where I could see my initials carved alongside Will and Addie's. His long, lean legs were cross negligently at the ankle, booted in the finest leather my mind could imagine, and he leaned back on his elbows, tossing back his slightly too long hair and slanting warm golden eyes up at me._

"_Are you well, Miss Platt?"_

_The voice always made me quiver. Tonight, even more so that usual, I felt its warmth seep through me, so that when I gave my customary reply, I actually meant it. "Just fine, Dr. Cullen." _

_His gentle smile made me sure that this was the correct answer. "I'm glad to hear it."_

"_Addie had her baby, you know. A boy."_

_Dr. Cullen's face was genuinely delighted, dazzling me even out of my periphery. "How wonderful. And his name?"_

"_Nolan."_

"_Nolan." Coming from his mouth, even the solitary word sounded melodious._

"_She's well," I added, anticipating his next question. Dr. Cullen always inquired about Addie, and next about Will, and then my parents._

_Never did he ask me about my husband._

"_And you have a new friend, as well?"_

_I didn't question how he knew about Noelle. He always seemed to know these things, well before I mentioned them to him. "Yes. She's been through so much."_

"_As have you."_

_Astonished, I gaped slightly, and turned my head to face him. "Please. Don't lie to me." The wise, soothing stare both frightened me and made me tremble with want._

"_I— Yes."_

_Nodding once in understanding, Dr. Cullen plucked a small purple flower from the patch beside him and, leaning across and stealing my breath in the same neat gesture, pushed it through a lock of my hair and behind my ear effortlessly. He smoothed the stands he had disturbed and murmured quietly._

"_Soon, Miss Platt. Soon."_


End file.
